BABA YAGA: I CURSED YOU

Chapter 1: The Recording in the Rain

The camera lens was speckled with droplets of ice-cold rain. Through the viewfinder, Elias (Keanu Reeves) looked older, his face a map of grief and exhaustion. He adjusted the handheld recorder, his voice barely a whisper over the rustle of the ancient pines.

“They say she lives here alone,” Elias muttered, staring into the impenetrable blackness of the Siberian taiga. “I’ve seen a lot of darkness in my time—war zones, cartel basements, the hollow eyes of addicts—but I’ve never seen anything like this. The air here doesn’t just feel cold; it feels hungry.”

He paused, glancing behind him as if a shadow had just detached itself from a tree. “If you’re watching this, then I’m going to go. I have to. My dad… he died for this secret. And I won’t let him be the last.”

Elias clicked the recorder off. He was a man who had spent his life debunking myths, a professional skeptic who specialized in “cleaning up” the messes left by occult scams. But the deeper he drove into these woods, the more his logic began to fray at the edges.

Chapter 2: The House on Bird’s Feet

The clearing was silent. Too silent. In the center stood a hut that seemed to be made of bone and rot. As Elias approached, the ground groaned. He drew a heavy-caliber handgun, the cold steel a small comfort against the overwhelming sense of dread.

“Who’s there?” Elias shouted, his voice echoing back with a mocking distortion. “Show yourself! This place… it’s not empty. I can hear you breathing.”

From the shadows of the porch, a figure emerged. It wasn’t the hunched hag of fairy tales. This was something far more dangerous. Jennifer Lawrence stood there, her skin as pale as birch bark, her eyes a shifting, predatory gold. She looked young, yet her gaze held the weight of a thousand winters.

“Baba,” Elias whispered, the name tasting like ash in his mouth.

“Baba Yaga,” she corrected, her voice a melodic scrape. She didn’t move, yet the house behind her seemed to shift, its wooden beams creaking like joints.

Elias raised his weapon. “I came here to find the witch. I didn’t think I’d find a god.”

Chapter 3: A Tasty Anger

The witch didn’t flinch at the gun. Instead, she tilted her head, watching Elias with a terrifying curiosity.

“You have a little very anger, as you call it,” she murmured, stepping off the porch. Her feet didn’t seem to touch the mud; she glided over it. “A tasty day, Elias. You smell of old blood and fresh sorrow. A perfect vintage for a curse.”

“If you’re real, come out and face me!” Elias roared, firing a shot into the air.

The sound of the gunshot was swallowed instantly by the trees. The house suddenly lurched. Elias fell back as the structure rose on massive, scaly, avian legs. The house was alive, a biomechanical horror of wood and bone that hissed like a serpent.

“No one told me,” Elias gasped, scrambling backward as the house turned its “face”—a door dripping with black ichor—toward him. “No one told me the house was the hunter.”

Chapter 4: The Ritual of the Cursed

Elias found himself trapped within the perimeter of the clearing. The trees had moved, their branches knitting together into a wall of thorns.

Baba Yaga approached him, her fingers trailing along his jaw. The touch was freezing. “Your father came seeking immortality,” she hissed. “He paid with his heart. You come seeking vengeance. What will you pay with, Little Crow?”

“I’ll pay with your head,” Elias growled, swinging a silver-weighted combat knife.

The witch vanished into a cloud of ravens, her laughter echoing from the canopy. Elias felt a searing pain in his chest. He looked down to see a black mark spreading across his skin—the Curse. It felt like liquid lead in his veins, slowing his heart, turning his memories to smoke.

“I cursed you, Elias,” her voice floated through the mist. “Now, you are part of the woods. You will walk these trees until your skin turns to bark and your blood to sap.”

Chapter 5: The Breaking of the Vow

Elias refused to die. Using a technique he had learned from his father’s hidden journals, he began to cauterize the curse using a localized ritual of fire and iron. He set the clearing ablaze, the orange flames licking at the house’s massive legs.

The House on Bird’s Feet shrieked—a sound like metal tearing. Baba Yaga reappeared, her golden eyes wide with fury. For the first time, she looked afraid.

“You would burn the world to save yourself?” she screamed.

“I’m not saving myself,” Elias said, his voice dropping to a gravelly, Keanu-esque rumble. “I’m ending you.”

He lunged through the flames, his body becoming a blur of kinetic violence. This wasn’t a fight of magic against man; it was a fight of sheer, stubborn will against a timeless evil.

Chapter 6: The Silence After the Scream

As the sun began to peek through the smoke of the burning taiga, the clearing was empty. The house lay in a heap of charred timber. The witch was gone, or perhaps she had simply retreated into the roots of the earth.

Elias sat on a blackened stump, his breath ragged. The mark on his chest was still there, but it was dormant, a scarred reminder of the darkness he had looked into.

He picked up his recorder and clicked it on one last time.

“I found the witch,” he said, staring at the camera with eyes that would never be the same. “But something found me first. If you’re watching this… stay out of the woods. Some legends don’t want to be found. And some curses… they never truly break.”

He stood up and walked away, leaving the camera behind. In the final frame, a single raven landed on the lens, its eyes glowing a familiar, predatory gold.