"The Lord's gonna come and she ain't pleased,
She ain't suffering fools no more."

Running.

Running.

"Faster, faster, faster!"

"What was that?"

"It's gaining on us! Run faster!"

A snap!, and then, "SHIT!"

A tense silence settles over the swamp like morning fog after a rain storm. You skid to a halt, thorns embedding deep into your paw pads with the force of it.

Slowly, hackles prickling in anticipation, you turn around. Your companion's body hangs from a long-dead oak tree by a rope around a rear pastern. Their body is far too high to reach, yanked into the air when the trap was triggered, but you can see their spine protruding from their skin even from down here. Blood drips from their mouth onto the dead leaves below, and their eyes are open, lifeless.

You run.

"Light's coming on, but slowly,
Pulling back the curtain on the reckoning."