Chicago, January 14, 2026. The city’s a frozen wasteland, wind howling like a banshee through the empty streets. I’m Dean Winchester, and my brother Sam and I are knee-deep in another hunt, our Impala’s heater barely keeping the chill at bay. Castiel, our trench-coated angel buddy, is riding shotgun, squinting at a map like it’s written in ancient Enochian. We’re here because people are dying—kids, mostly, found in backyards and parks, their bodies stiff as boards, skin blue, and their mouths sewn shut with black thread that smells like rotting meat. The news calls it a sick prank. We know better. This is our kind of weird.

Sam’s got his laptop open, digging through lore. “It’s gotta be a wraith,” he says, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “Old Slavic stories talk about a ‘Frost Wraith’ that feeds on fear, stitching its victims’ mouths to trap their screams.” I roll my eyes. “Great, Sammy, a sewing-circle monster. Any idea how to gank it?” Castiel, all serious, chimes in: “The wraith is drawn to terror. It thrives in cold, desolate places. We must find its lair.” Yeah, Cas, real helpful.

Our first lead comes from a freaked-out teen, Mia, who saw her friend Jake get nabbed outside a skate park. “It was tall, like, seven feet,” she stammers, clutching a Red Bull. “Its face was all wrong—teeth like icicles, and it hummed this creepy lullaby.” She heard Jake scream, then nothing. We check the park, and I spot it: a trail of frost, glinting like spiderwebs, leading to an abandoned ice rink on the South Side. The air’s thick with that rotten-meat stench, and my breath catches as we step inside.

The rink’s a nightmare—ice cracked, lights flickering, and a low hum echoing, like a lullaby from hell. Sam’s got his EMF reader screaming, and Cas’s angel blade glows faintly. Then we see it: the Frost Wraith, a lanky horror with a face like melted wax, its mouth a jagged maw of ice-teeth. Black thread dangles from its claw-like hands, writhing like worms. “Dean!” Sam yells as it lunges, fast as a snake. I dodge, barely, and fire a salt round. It screeches, but the salt just pisses it off.

Cas chants something in Latin, and the wraith turns on him, its thread shooting out like a lasso. It catches Cas’s arm, and he gasps, his eyes flickering. “It’s… feeding,” he grunts. Sam grabs a lore book from his bag, shouting, “The wraith’s heart! It’s gotta be frozen solid—destroy it!” I spot a lump of ice in the rink’s center, pulsing like a sick heartbeat, wrapped in that cursed thread. The wraith’s on me now, its lullaby drilling into my skull, making my worst fears—losing Sam, failing Dad—bubble up. I shake it off, grab a crowbar from the Impala, and charge.

The wraith’s thread lashes my leg, cold burning through my jeans. Sam’s hacking at it with a machete, and Cas, looking paler than usual, blasts it with a burst of angel mojo. I smash the ice heart, and the wraith lets out a scream that shatters every window. It melts into a puddle of black sludge, thread and all. The rink warms, just a bit, but my leg’s still numb, and Cas is shaky. “That was too close,” I mutter, tossing the crowbar.

We burn the sludge for good measure and hit the road. Mia’s safe, but she swears she still hears that lullaby at night. Sam’s worried the wraith left something behind, and Cas keeps rubbing his arm where the thread touched. Me? I’ve got a bad feeling that cold’s still in my bones. Chicago’s got more shadows than we can hunt, and something tells me this ain’t the last lullaby we’ll hear.