[center][b]Kadir Khouri, son of Dabir Khouri, Wheat Village's Craftsman[/b][/center]

Kadir sighed as he ran his hand through his long, jet black hair. He was sitting atop a hill near the southermost part of Wheat Village, where he could overlook everything from the Chief's hall in the north down to the Wheat Fields right at the foot of the hill. It wasn't a big village, but it was his home. And, according to his father, they made the best bread in the world in spite of being so close to the Deepwoods.

He groaned and stood up, today was a dull day. Work had been scarce and both Butros and Caliana were busy with helping their families in their respective areas, those being carpentry for Butros and herbalism and medicine for Caliana.

Kadir's father was the village's craftsman and he usually spent his day in his father's hut, helping him build the next set of tools or whatever, but today was different. His father was working on his own private project, a project he wouldn't even tell him about, and it annoyed Kadir to have nothing to work on. 

As he stretched his shoulders, Kadir heard something. Some kind of shuffling of feet was coming from the woods behind him.

"Butros man, you done polishing handles?" Kadir chuckled, but there was no response.

"Butros?" He asked and turned around. There was no one there.

[i]'Odd.'[/i] Kadir thought, raising an eyebrow at the treeline. He looked back at Wheat Village and then back at the trees and shrugged, [i]'Oh well, I'm not doing anything here, so lets go for a walk and check that out.'[/i] And with that, he stepped into the woods.

He walked for minutes, following the shuffling on feet which only got louder and louder, at one point sounding like he was only a few feet away from whatever was making the sounds. But they always moved before Kadir could reach them.

And then he saw them. Tracks, some small spots of blood on the odd blade of grass here and there. He stopped that instant. What was it that he was following? A wild animal that had caught prey would have confronted him by now.

"...elp..." 

It was a murmur, and it came from behind Azzam. He froze.

"... Help...!" It got louder, and the shuffling of feet got too close for comfort.

"Help me...!" He felt the warmth of another person's aura behind him. 

Finally, he turned around.

It wasn't a monster. It was a man, looking pale and pressing heavily on his chest with his left hand. Blood leaked from between his fingers, and his voice was strained.

"Help me, young man...!" The man croaked out, falling to his knees. Kadir reacted and tried to help him up, but the man pushed Kadir away, "Not like that..."

"Then h-?"

"Tell them.... Tell your people," The wounded man regained his breath, coughing up some blood in the process, "leave before the Beast arrives..."

"What? What Beast? What happened to you? I can take you to the Village to heal!" Kadir felt his heart start to beat faster, doing his best to pull the man up to his feet, but he seemed to grow heavier by the moment.

"G-Go, young man... The shadows grow longer, sharper... Go before they see you-" he coughed up more blood and let his left hand fall to the floor, covered in blood, "... d-don't touch the shado-" He started gagging. Then he went red, then purple.

Kadir tried to help the man, and that was when he noticed the tendril-like shadow around his throat. It squeezed so hard that it looked like the man's veins would explode any second.

So Kadir tried to set him free from the shadow but the moment he touched it, a chill went down his spine and he fell backwards. Suddenly, he felt a weight hit his back. The man was breathing now, but when Kadir looked at his shoulders, he saw it. The shadow.

"Shit!" He panicked and hit his back against a tree. The shadow kept crawling towards his neck and chest. "Fuck, fuck!"

He rolled on the ground. The shadow was now wrapping itself around his neck and it was getting hard to breathe.

Kadir started screaming and crying, his heartbeat going insane and his brain shutting down. In his panic, he hit the back of his head against a tree and fell down in its shadow, dazed.

Though dazed, he felt the weight disappear. Then he heard the screams, the sounds of ripping flesh and a wet pop.

Minutes later, Kadir recovered and looked at where the wounded man had been.

There was now a body missing a hand and with a huge hole in its chest in the small clearing, blood smeared everywhere and tears streaking down its face.

Kadir doubled over and threw up, then he stumbled his way back to the Village, to his hut and fell asleep.

[hider=Summary]Kadir meets a wounded man while following a strange shuffling sound in the woods
The wounded man warns him of the shadows and the Beast, and then both of them are attacked by a Shadow.
Kadir gets lucky while the man, not so much. After un-dazing(??), Kadir sees the man's body has a huge hole in his chest, is missing a hand and had tears streaking down his face.
Kadir pukes and walks back home, kinda traumatised.
The stage has been set for the biggest Astartian plot line I've ever done.[/hider]

[hider=Might Summary]
They're puny mortals, they don't have might[/hider]