Marvin Crackle had spent three years hunting a beast nobody else believed in, and today he meant to leash it. He crouched in the reeds at the edge of the marsh, a coil of rope over his shoulder. Beside him, his small blue-gray traveling pet pricked its ears and stared at the mud. The people in town called Marvin mad. He would drag the Clovermire cryptid into the square, alive and leashed, and watch their faces change. "I know it's real," Marvin whispered. "I've seen its tracks. I've heard it scream at night." But he had never once seen the thing itself. That was the whole problem. Tracks washed away. Screams could be foxes. Without the beast in hand, he had nothing but his word, and his word was worth nothing. His pet lifted its nose and bolted into the reeds. Marvin lumbered after it, breath heavy, boots sucking in the mud. The little creature stopped at a wide print pressed deep into the bank. Fresh. Water still seeped into the toes. Marvin's heart hammered. "Good. Good boy. Which way?" The pet led him to a hollow beneath a leaning tree. Something moved inside the dark. Marvin gripped the rope and stepped closer. Then the shape rose, and it was not an animal at all. It was tall and thin, gray-skinned, with huge glassy eyes. It held a small jar of black ink and a thin brush. It watched him without fear. Marvin froze. This was no cryptid. This was something else, something worse for his plans. "You're not the beast," he said. "There's no beast, is there. It was you all along, making the tracks." The thin gray figure tilted its head. It dipped the brush and painted a slow mark on the bark. The mark looked like the very print Marvin had chased for years. His stomach dropped. Three years of tracks. Three years of proof. All faked by this quiet visitor. "No," Marvin said. He lunged with the rope. The figure sidestepped and pressed the inky brush into his palm, closing his fingers around it. Then it turned and walked into the marsh, unhurried, and the reeds swallowed it whole. Marvin's pet did not chase. It sat and watched it go. Marvin stood alone with the brush in his fist and no beast on his rope. He had wanted proof the cryptid was real. Instead he had found the truth: the thing he hunted never existed. He had chased a stranger's ink across the swamp and called it a monster. He looked at the brush. He looked at the marsh where the visitor had vanished. The townsfolk called him mad for chasing a beast that wasn't there. They were right about the beast. But something real had just walked away from him, something no one in town had ever seen. Marvin wiped the ink on his sleeve and started after it. If he could not drag a cryptid into the square, he would drag this.