Cindi's little legs carried her in a small run to her bedroom.

Her father Anderson followed her up the stairs, holding a small candlestick as he went. He smiled as he watched his daughter trot off to her room, even more so when she jumped onto the bed excitedly.

The room was new to Cindi. She was old enough now that her parents trusted her to sleep alone and to climb the stairs to it. At six, she was a good and smart child; and Anderson was glad that the years had been good enough to his family that he could provide her with the luxury of a bedroom. It was thanks to his father and grandfather's work; they'd suffered in their time so the family could prosper. Anderson was eternally grateful to those who had come before him.

Cindi propped herself up on her bed; she peered with interest through the cracks in her window's fastened, wooden shutters. "Papa, it's raining so hard tonight."

The storm was coming down consistently on the roof in a violent pitter-patter.

"It's just the last one before the snow," her father said to her.

He placed a hand on Cindi's shoulders and gently guided her down to lay on her pillow. The girl smiled as she waited expectantly for her father to ensure her blanket was snug around her. Anderson happily did as was always expected of him and tucked his daughter in with his strong, roughened hands.

"It's a good night for a story, papa," Cindi said. "A scary one?"

The small smile that Anderson had on his face from tucking his daughter in turned to a look of reluctant apprehension. He glanced to the rain-battered shutters. "Not tonight, my love."

Cindi followed his gaze to the window. She was a smart child. "Is it because of the monster?"

Anderson's brows brought themselves together. "Who told you about that?"

Cindi shirked a little bit, shyly but not in fear of her father—never in fear of him. "Gretta."

Her father considered his words carefully. "Your grandfather and great grandfather are protecting this home. You don't need to fear anything tonight. I promise. And so do they."

The bones of his father and grandfather were entombed under the family hearth. Their hearth-shrine was well-tended each and every night. Anderson had faith in that nightly act of devotion and what he believed it meant. Even if his household was not as strong as it once had been, he still believed.

"I'm not scared," Cindi said. "Because you and mama are right down the stairs."

"That's right," he said, hiding a pain Cindi didn't see, and kissed his daughter on the head. "Your family won't ever let any harm come to you."

Cindi smiled a child's innocent gratitude at him. "Thank you, papa."

"You never need to thank me for that."

Cindi was appeased. She was a good girl. But when Anderson found himself lingering in her doorway, it took him a moment longer than usual to tear his gaze away from her.

The girl found herself drifting to sleep easily after her beloved Papa had put her to bed. Her father always made her feel safe enough to sleep.

Anderson descended the stairs and entered his own room. He settled into his own bed. His empty bed.

His wife was missing, as she was so often during the nights. Once she had waited for him to fall asleep before slipping away, but that courtesy had dwindled in recent months. With the rain, he doubted he would see her again until the morning. He had told no one of what his wife had been doing for years now, for Cindi's sake. But he knew that others knew. He saw their pity, and their judgement on their faces from time to time. He endured it for the sake of his child; she loved her mother. Even with his wife's flaws. And he, at least, would be there to protect their daughter, just as Cindi expected of them both.

***

It came through the wind and rain. Its anger, and the slight done against it, had echoed out and brought forth the wraith of the local elemental spirts upon Forbas. It slipped through the village. So many houses, so many people. Always growing, expanding. The spirits of their ancestors grew too in numbers with every generation. Spirits that intruded on its lands to an even more disgusting degree than the living did.

It had warned them. The elementals had sent winds and rains on its behalf; they had destroyed their fences and it had personally sent predators to kill their livestock at least once a season for decades. Their rooves and walls had been battered nightly with clear warnings for a fortnight straight now. But they had not listened.

Once, it had tolerated the men. It had originally thought of them as animals under its care. Like all the others.

But the men had turned away from giving their offerings to it. They slew more of the other creatures he tended than was their due. They unbalanced things. And the very existence of their cursed ancestors greedily ate at the fabric of the grey ethereal that belonged to it here. As if this insult was not heinous enough, the living now fed their devotion to their own ancestors exclusively—and denied their promised worship to it.

It could feel itself growing thin, growing old as a thing that should not know age. It had felt it for decades.

Even now it could feel the presence of the human shades standing watch in their half-comas over the many houses that it slipped between unseen. It had been patient once. Understanding even. It no longer was.

It had listened to the words of the humans, carried on the echoing lips of the lesser air elementals, as they had spoken of their ways and their new beliefs. And it knew the workings of the grey ethereal better than even the eldest human soul echo ever could.

The belief of the men would be their weakness. Because belief was truth, or could be. Such was the way of the ethereal. And such was the source of the crime of man. Fittingly, it would also be the tool that it used to correct their follies.

It stopped at the threshold to a particularly large home. There were two levels to it. But it wasn't the physical world that had led to it choosing this particular dwelling. It was the discord that it sensed inside the walls of the home. Discord that the humans believed weakened their family spirits—and thus a discord that did just that.

The door creaked open for it. It slipped through a crack that its manifesting not-body should not have been able to fit through. The door closed behind it.

It could sense the spirits of the home stirring the moment that its hooves first touched down onto the floorboards. But they stirred from their half-dream so slowly. It had the time to do as it willed. To enact the first step of its plan.

It was halfway up the stairs, already taking much more of a truly physical form than even moments before, by the time the spirits of the home were truly finding their own conscious awareness. There were no lights in the home. No lights on the simple stairwell, but the flash of lightning cast the shadow of its elongated and crooked maw on the wall.

Its hoof creaked on the stairs. It shouldn't have done so; it could be as quiet as any predator if it wished. It knew the sound to be the work of the now rousing spirits. But they were weak and sluggish in the home.

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***

It could have been minutes or hours. Cindi wasn't sure if she had fallen asleep or not. Maybe she had almost been slumbering. She certainly wasn't anymore when she heard the creaking of the stairs.

She opened her eyes slowly. She waited for the candlelight that would accompany her papa or mama if they were the ones coming up the stairs. Her mother often checked on her late into the night, after all.

But there was no candlelight. And she felt scared for a reason she couldn't place. Especially because she never felt scared when her papa was downstairs. She almost wanted to call for him, but he worked so hard and he'd be tired in the morning if he had to wake up in the middle of the night. Besides, her momma would probably check on her soon. Her mama did most nights.

Her door creaked open. And the same primal wrongness, that her child heart couldn't place or identify as a named feeling, had her clutch her covers up to her face.

She could barely watch as the door pushed itself wide.

Her mouth opened to prepare to scream for her papa. She didn't know quite why, but it did.

A shadow slipped into her room. And closed the door behind itself.

It took a few steps towards her.

"Mama!" she said with relief.

"Little love," her mother stumbled oddly across the creaky floorboards.

"I'm glad it's you," Cindi said.

Her mother approached her, and Cindi could just barely see her mama's face through the moonlight filtering through the window.

"Me too," her mother said and slumped strangely to the floor beside her bed to half-hug her.

"Mama, did you eat something funny?" she asked. "Your breath smells weird. And you’re wet.”

Her mother’s clothes dampened Cindi’s blankets, not quite soaking them through—but dripping water on them all the same.

"Shh," her mother said in a slurred way that seemed odd to Cindi. "Needed to check on you. I love you.”

The girl felt something was wrong with her mama, but she smiled back anyway. "I love you too."

But her mother didn't respond. She was already asleep as she kneeled beside Cindi's bed. Her arms slumped over the girl.

"Mama?" Cindi said and nudged her.

"Shh, it's fine, Cindi," her mother said and pushed her daughter's hands away.

Cindi looked at her mom, confused, but let the grown woman settle back to sleep all the same. Her mama acted strangely sometimes, and her breath did smell funny, but the little girl did still feel safer now that she was in the room with her.

"Okay, mama," Cindi said and adjusted herself carefully so that her mother's arms didn't fall on her so uncomfortably or get her too wet.

And the little girl tried to go back to sleep.

***

Its hands tested the door handle, lifting it one way and then another before it understood its function enough to open it. It entered the room. Slowly it approached the bed and the two humans, while the door closed of its own accord behind it.

The people of the village had stolen power from it, taken some of its dominion even, and revoked their pledged worship of it over time.

But it could steal things as well. It could remind them why the ancestors they now allowed to weaken it had long ago begun to give it offerings in the first place. It could steal things too, steal precious things. Things it could teach and raise to replace its stolen strength, things that would in their being taken also convince the men to return their belief and respect to it. And that could enact its will to ensure the truth of things was heard by Forbas.

It felt the household spirits forming in truth now, their awareness had finally solidified; it felt their arrogant ire sinking into it. In the very room it now entered, the shades who supped on the household's belief were willing themselves to exist in the physical. They were trying stubbornly to rally themselves, but the very air was permeated with the ethereal stench of betrayal. A stench which metaphysically flowed off of the older woman, who hunched over the small child's bed. The spiritual weight of her deeds inundated the air of the ethereal plane. It was a real thing to the ancestor shades, not just an idea, and something antithetical to the mortal beliefs which allowed the ghosts the power to form at all—to even exist at all.

The psychic echo of broken faith from the girl's mother impaired her own family's guardians. But it didn't impair it.

Every hoofstep it now took creaked loudly. Too loudly, louder than before. It knew it was the thickening influence of the family's ancestors causing it. Its hunched, feathered shoulders and thin legs moved forward all the same.

It reached for the little girl in the bed. Emaciated, starved hands sprawled out for her.

The bedroom door flew open again.

It turned its toothy snout towards the man who had entered. The man's face had the look of someone who felt, in the parts of themselves that didn't communicate through words, that he simply had to check on his slumbering offspring—that something was wrong in the middle of the night.

Its round, sunken eyes beaded on the intruder.

"What? What are you?" the man shouted at it, but then his startled words turned to anger. "Get away from them!"

It didn't fear the man. But the emotions that flowed off of him... their spiritual strength cut through that of the betrayal that hung thickly like miasma in the ethereal.

The little girl opened her eyes at her father's shout. Lightning crashed. And she saw it.

The girl screamed and grabbed for her drunken mother, who barely roused at all. "Mama!"

"Cindi?" her mother slurred.

It reached for the girl, trying to move faster than the psychic knife of mundane yet powerful parental love from the father could cut through the spiritual plane.

The girl screamed louder and shirked from it. It would not sully itself with a lunge, but it pressed forward more quickly. Its legs moved with purpose in a marching glide across the floor.

The father was not, could not be idle; he bolted and reached for it, but it threw the shutters open with its will and the storm burst through the revealed window on its behalf. The father was thrown into the far wall. The girls covers rose into the air as she clung to her mother, who, with awakened eyes, now saw it too.

The mother, out of pure instinct, grabbed its outstretched arm. It knocked her aside and to the floor. It was easy enough to do in her state.

It now did lunge for the shrieking, wailing girl who was throwing herself against the corner of the wall against which her bed sat.

It claws touched her face.

And hands grabbed it and hauled it back from the child just as swiftly. Ethereal hands, fingers, and palms that were made of belief and well-fed, yet equally hindered, love.

The girl screamed even louder when she saw the faces of a grandfather and great-grandfather she had never known form behind it. The faces were worried, enraged, and viscerally and visibly frustrated with their own previous inability to act. More than any of that, they were determined.

The child's ancestors pulled at it. In comparison to it, their strength was insufficient in all things but in what they now did, in the one matter and place in which they could rival it in only one way. Where the girl's father had failed to touch it at all, the home's guardian shades ripped at parts of it beyond the physical.

It knew when it was temporarily outmatched. For it knew the rules of the grey ethereal better than any shade.

It didn't shriek. But it did flee. It pulled itself away from the shades and escaped through the rain-soaked open shutter, becoming less real and more of a ghost than will-formed half-flesh. By shedding physical form, it became less of a threat to the girl—just enough so that the spiritual authority of the shades became less effective on it. Just enough that it escaped their grasp and their wretched, miniscule domain of power. A place of power that should've been its.

***

Cindi sobbed as she looked into her mother's face. She sought compassion from the woman's eyes but found only dilated confusion and feral panic. There was a well of a mother's concern yes, and a fear of her own of the monster they'd seen and which she had touched, but nothing in her mama's eyes was sharp or full of any kind of understanding. And it made Cindi afraid. Tears ran down the mother's cheeks to mirror that of her child's.

Her papa rushed past her mama and wrapped Cindi in his arms. His gaze never left the open window, but he didn't move to let his daughter go to close the shutters—not yet.

Her mama had pulled herself up on one of the short posts of Cindi's bed; one arm held onto the bedpost as the woman shivered, and, now that Cindi was safe in Anderson's grasp, her eyes stared shakingly at the hand that had touched the thing.

The monster was gone. And so were the strange and glowing people, that Cindi now thought had to have been ghosts. It was only as she was wrapped in her papa's arms, her little body still locked up in an unmoving fear, that some part of her mind realized how much the ghosts had looked like her papa. And that they had protected her. But only barely.

She wasn't as safe with her papa and mama sleeping downstairs as she had always thought. And that hurt more than being touched even by a monster ever could.