The Indrik stirred from its sacred glade with a ripple of unease trembling down its luminous spine. The winds no longer whispered in rhythm. The stars had begun blinking out of sequence. And somewhere deep within its belly — an ache, dull but growing, throbbed like a discordant note in the song of the world.

It had felt something like this once, centuries ago, when the glaciers wept and the seas trespassed into valleys. That was a long dying. This… this felt more intimate.

So it walked.

Down from the ridge where the mists never parted, through groves that bent to let it pass, across fields that woke with blooming flowers in its wake — until the first thatched roofs of a village emerged from the treeline like uncertain thoughts.

The Indrik glided down the main street, hooves never quite touching earth, trailing light and mist. Children shrieked and scattered. Dogs howled and cowered. Old women wept into their aprons. Men froze mid-task, their eyes wide with the dull horror reserved for omens that walk.

Because that’s what the Indrik was, to them — not a creature, but a prophecy. And prophecies never boded well.

It made no sound. Only the faint crystalline chime of wind through its antlers — like glass sighing under pressure — as it sought the one soul who might understand.

At the far edge of the village, behind a beaded curtain of moss and bones, stood the crooked house of Orun, the medicine man.

The Indrik halted before the home, peering down with those infinite eyes.

Orun, who had seen too much and lived too long, stepped from his door already muttering, wiping ash and dried rosehips from his hands. He looked up, and instead of falling to his knees like the villagers, he only squinted and said:

“…Well, damn. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

The Indrik inclined its head — not a nod, but the weight of entire seasons folding inward.

“Come,” said the man, waving it toward the back. “Let’s have a look then.”

He led it to his workshop, a cavernous room that smelled of juniper and forgotten things. A wide stone scale dominated the center. The Indrik stepped atop it, and the weight settled — exactly as it should.

“Hmph. No loss of mass,” muttered Orun, scribbling on a slip of bark.

He climbed the winding staircase that circled the interior, bringing him to eye-level with the beast’s antlers. He measured their length — a proud six feet — and their density with his old hands. He murmured approval as he felt the rich hum within the crystal branches. Then down to the neck, the body, the line of its haunch.

“Strong. Not withering. No corruption. No shedding of light or feather.”

But the Indrik turned its great head and spoke — not with voice, but in the shared pulse of thoughts:

“I feel… not right. The world is fine, yet I am not.”

That was when Orun frowned for the first time.

He ducked beneath the creature, placing one hand on the shimmered belly. He pressed along the stomach gently, then firmly. When he pushed a thumb beneath one of the ribs, the Indrik let out a low, plaintive hum — like thunder being mourned.

Orun chuckled.

“Well. You’re not dying. Not divine rot. Not time-wilt. It’s… a belly thing.”

He shuffled to a bookshelf, fingers flying over spines etched in languages older than language. He pulled a cracked leather tome, flipped past pages of dragons, cloud-stags, sunworms, until—

“Ah,” he grinned. “Here you are. Chapter Six: Stasis Bloat in High-Ether Creatures.”

He moved like a dancer now, old though he was — mixing wild ginger root, powdered iron birch, moon-silk pollen, and the spit of a laughing fox. He brewed it over a glimmerflame and poured it into a bowl of antler-shell, then climbed the stairs once again to the beast’s head.

“You’re just a bit ill,” he said softly, cradling the bowl. “Drink this, and all should be well.”

The Indrik drank.

Its vast throat worked once, twice. Then it exhaled a silvery plume of mist, lower and warmer than before.

“Good,” said Orun. “Now. Come. Rest.”

He led the creature beyond his house to a glade only he and the wild things knew. The grass here was made of half-remembered lullabies. The trees leaned in close but did not touch. It was a place the world had forgotten how to ruin.

“Stay here a few days. Let the roots and your stars realign. You’ll be well.”

The Indrik purred — a low, immense sound, like galaxies aligning. Then, in quiet thanks, it tilted its head and let fall a single tine of antler. It struck the grass with a sound like distant bells and shimmered with a quiet power.

Orun picked it up and smiled, watching the creature vanish into the fog-draped woods.

He turned back toward the village.

And there — in glorious absurdity — the people were screaming.

The baker was flinging bread into the sky as an offering. Someone had drawn runes in goat blood on the mayor’s door. Children wore dead bird masks. A priest had fainted atop a wheelbarrow.

“The End is nigh!” one shrieked. “The Indrik has come! The sky will crack! The rivers will burn!”

Orun sighed.

He tucked the antler beneath his coat, spat into the dirt, and muttered, “Damn fools. All this over a bit of gas.”