Sacred Forest, 4.8 Stars

The forest we enter is shimmering and ethereal, a green so saturated it looks wet even in dry air. The leaves are shaped like blades, pointing inward with unnerving precision toward a clearing where a grey statue waits. Armless, faceless, it’s worn smooth by centuries of rain and worship. Moss creeps up its base in a way that looks almost deliberate, like an offering.

Fresh off the desk, we've been sent to find stories in the field. The best story wins a promotion to correspondent. We grip our recorders, our expired press badges, and our one shared bottle of water, and march on: fearless, underpaid, and desperate for a byline.

The deity arrives without warning—blinding, sudden, wrong. Light folds in on itself and out steps a green mass with no fixed shape, crowned by a hollow skull with sockets like open graves. Its horns are jagged and gold-veined, scraping bark from the canopy as it leans down. Somewhere close, a bird stops singing mid-note. We scramble back before one horn catches a throat.

"Be not afraid, my children," it intones, voice rolling up from somewhere ancient, gravel wrapped in silk. "Come. Pay tribute at my shrine."

We freeze. Nobody's editor prepared us for this. Priya, beside me, has already stopped breathing.

Then the mass shudders—a full-body ripple, like static across old television—and from somewhere inside itself, it produces, impossibly, a phone. The screen cracked in three directions, case peeling at the corner, held together with what might be dried leaves. It holds the phone out, thumb—or the suggestion of one—hovering over the screen.

"I am one of the highest-rated local deities in this region," it says, and suddenly we understand exactly why our editor was so eager to hand this assignment off. "Would any of you care to leave a review? Five stars, if you're so inclined. I accept constructive criticism, though I do reserve the right to respond publicly."

Silence. Somewhere behind me, a recorder is still running, red light blinking like it doesn't know any better.

"I could smite you instead," the deity adds, almost apologetically, horns dipping in what might be a shrug. "But honestly, engagement's been down since the equinox, and my priest says visibility matters more than fear these days."

The headline the next morning is unflinchingly unanimous.

ANCIENT EVIL ASKS FOR A REVIEW: Would risk the “Shraap” to see again, Say Local Reporters