Dark fantasy art of a skeletal deer-like monster with a skull head and antlers, carrying a glowing lantern in its rib cage, in a misty forest.

The Lantern Beast is a small, unsettling creature, no larger than a hunting dog, yet its very presence makes the woods feel heavier. Its body is stout but unnaturally thin, as though it has been starved and stretched by curses. Jagged lengths of steel plating are crudely fused into its sides and back like armor bolted onto broken wood, while gnarled roots and vines make up the rest of its wiry frame. Despite its size, it carries itself with the eerie weight of something much older. From its hollow chest cavity dangles a lantern-like core, a cracked iron cage of ribs wrapped around a sickly, glowing light. The lantern flickers with shifting spores and embers, throwing long, skeletal shadows when it moves. Its head is an elk skull fused with steel, antlers twisted into sharp, unnatural hooks, too large for its shrunken, crooked body. When it lumbers forward on four crooked limbs, you hear the scrape of iron against wood, like chains dragging across roots. The lantern glow makes it appear almost inviting at a distance, like a beacon in the fog — but up close, the Beast’s gaunt shape, rattling armor, and empty skull face reveal its true nature: a creature stitched together from hunger, steel, and the curses of a dying world. See more