The children came home, scars in both mind and body. They were unresponsive for weeks. The people of the village tried everything to get them to speak. It all came out of them at once one day, when asked a simple question.

"Who did this to you?" Their parents pleaded in fear and rage.

Their little lips trembling, a single word was all that could escape their mouths in that moment.

"God."

And as the parents cried in confusion, despair and terror, God watched them in the darkness of the woods where they once played with content merriment.

God simply laughed, retreating into the pitch black abyss of the trees.

The villagers slept with locked doors and lit candles, for they knew God would return, as he always did. He'd take many of the children of the village, and bring them all into the trees.

Months would pass.

Only a fraction of the children would be brought home. They would never be the same, not in body nor spirit. The children that entered that forsaken place, unseen by the eyes of another living mortal, would be forever disfigured.

Some believed they were brave enough to face The Abyss.

Soldiers, adventurers, heroes to be all ventured into those woods to slay the wretched beast within.

Only one returned, missing all limbs but an arm. His last words were little more than incoherent screams of agony.

He died of bloodloss.

The cycle would repeat itself every 16 years.

But then, as suddenly as it started, after centuries of torment, it stopped without warning.

The villagers still live in fear of God to this day.