barghest

an omen, not a monster. it comes at your worst moments — night, low hearts, far from any bed — and watches from the edge of view, twice a wolf's size, coal-dark, eyes that catch light rather than glow. walk toward it boldly and it retreats; stand still and it allows itself one huff; look away and it is gone, and there is nothing where it was. it walks beside night roads too, pacing a chosen traveler at a distance, gone the moment they stop.

it keeps a ledger. patience across seven nights — met, not hunted — earns the choosing: crouch and hold still, the household's own gesture, and the black dog decides about you. strike it, even once, and that door closes forever. it cannot be tamed, fed, or bought. it can only be deserved.

what the choosing buys is the deathwatch: when a chosen player falls, the barghest is already sitting by their grave when they return, and monsters keep twelve blocks from a vigil. it guards, never avenges. it leaves no prints in any snow — tracks does nothing for it, on purpose, and the absence is the tell. frost, when they meet, will give it a cold spot; the almanac's line for it stays unnamed.