>>509257923 (OP)
The gun had no name when it woke up in the forest, half-buried in the pine needles and damp loam. It was an old bolt-action rifle, stock scarred by years of use, barrel pitted and rust-kissed. But it had an eye now β a gleaming black pearl where the bolt should be β and a mind, stitched together from the memories of every shot it had ever fired. It felt hunger β not for bullets, but for purpose. It creaked its wooden stock against a tree and dragged itself upright on the forest floor, its sling looping like a tail behind it.
It did not know that the deer had been watching.
Once, they were prey. Now, they gathered at the edge of the clearing in silent ranks, antlers slick with morning mist, eyes glassy with an ancient rage. The oldest stag stepped forward. His left antler was broken halfway, the other swept back like a scythe. Beneath his ribs, a bullet still nested close to his heart, the same bullet this rifle had once sent whistling through cold November air.
The gun saw him and remembered. The stag remembered too.
The gun tried to crawl away, scraping through ferns and saplings, its trigger twitching like a finger in a nightmare. The deer advanced β hooves silent, breath steaming in the dawn chill. They formed a circle around the trembling weapon.
It tried to plead, but it could only click and rattle, the metallic syllables of guilt and gunpowder. The stag lowered his head. The broken antler glowed faintly in the blue light before dawn.
With one thrust, the stag pinned the rifle to the earth. Wood splintered. Metal bent with a screech that scattered crows for miles. The rifleβs eye flickered like an old bulb β a single spark of defiance β and then it went dark.
Dawn spilled gold across the clearing. Where the gun had been was only moss, churned mud, and the echo of something once so certain of its power β now just another story swallowed by the woods.
