It was the kind of mist that didn't move when you drove through it.
Thick as bone dust, layered like skin, it hovered across the mountain pass in unnatural stillness. The forest was tall and black on either side, not swaying, not breathing. Just watching.
From inside the car, the world was reduced to grayscale and glass. The windshield wipers did nothing. The heater was useless. And the engine made a low, soft clicking sound—like something trying to remember how to live.
"Did we just drive into a screensaver from 1997?" Renzo muttered, face half-lit by the map on his cracked phone. "Because if a deer walks out with human eyes, I'm voting we turn around."
Damian didn't answer. His hands gripped the wheel tighter than necessary, knuckles pale. The road beneath them had begun to slope downward—steeper than it should have. And the white lines were gone, swallowed by gravel and fog.
Next to him, Lilith stared out her window. Her breath fogged the glass. She hadn't spoken in over ten minutes.
"Lil?" Damian said softly, not looking at her. "You okay?"
She nodded once. Then slowly reached up and traced something in the misted window with her fingertip. A spiral. No—a spiral inside a triangle. Then she blinked and rubbed it away.
Renzo leaned between the front seats, chewing his gum like it owed him money.
"Alright. Give it to me straight. Are we going to a village or entering a creepypasta?"
"The Fire Festival's in two days," Damian said, finally. "We're just early."
"Early to what?" Renzo snorted. "Frostbite? A local murder-suicide reenactment? I'm not judging, I just like to know my role."
The car made a sound like something unclenching. Then died.
No warning. No stutter. No power.
Everything inside shut down at once—lights, heater, dashboard.
Then silence.
Not silence like quiet.
Silence like... a pressure drop.
Like something massive had inhaled.
Damian twisted the key again. The engine clicked. And again. Nothing.
Renzo's smile cracked a little. "Cool. That's fun. Definitely not cursed."
"We're close," Lilith said softly.
They both looked at her. She hadn't moved.
"How do you know?" Damian asked.
She opened her door without answering. The sound was too loud, like it broke something.
Cold air poured in.
They stepped out onto the gravel road. The mist swallowed their legs by the knee.
Lilith was already walking.
No one told her where to go.
No one had to.
The walk down into Kenzora was quieter than it should've been.
There were no birds. No wind. No footsteps echoing back.
Just fog, earth, and the distant sound of something that might've been music. No rhythm. No instruments. Just a tone—human, maybe. Sustained. Sweet. Uncomfortable.
Lilith walked first.
Then Damian.
Then Renzo, muttering softly, camera bag bouncing against his hip.
Down the slope, the trees thinned. A stone gate appeared from the mist, old and arched like a vertebrae from something long dead. Moss clung to its ribs. On either side were two statues of women with eyeless faces, holding carved bowls of black water.
The gate's iron hinges creaked open as they stepped near, though no one touched them.
A group of children stood inside.
Six. Maybe eight. Dressed in wool and wood-colored shawls, faces pale and empty. Their hands were folded in front of them like paper dolls.
When they spoke, it was at once.
Not perfectly in sync—off by milliseconds, like a delay in an echo chamber.
"Welcome back."
Damian stopped walking.
Renzo said, "Oh no."
Lilith didn't react. She smiled faintly, nodded to the children, and kept walking.
The guesthouse was waiting for them.
Irena—the host—was already lighting candles when they arrived, as though she'd been expecting them that precise second.
She was tall, straight-backed, her skin pale as birch bark. Her eyes were kind. Or tried to be.
"I remember you," she said to Damian, even though he hadn't been here since he was eight.
"You look like your mother."
He didn't answer.
"You'll be in the north rooms," she continued. "We've prepared them since last week."
Renzo leaned close to Damian. "Okay but how. The email confirmation was yesterday. Literally. Yesterday."
Lilith said nothing. She walked to the stairs like she already knew the way.
Damian's room smelled like wax and dusted pine.
No lightbulbs. Just a row of candles in sconces.
The bed was made in a way too precise for comfort—creased corners, folded towel shaped like a flower. His name was stitched into the pillow in red thread.
He checked the bathroom.
No mirror.
Just a blank wooden square where one should have been.
When he returned to the hall, Irena was standing there silently.
"We removed the mirrors," she said, as if he'd asked. "After the last time."
She smiled.
Didn't blink.
Then walked away.
Renzo's room was smaller.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding something.
A mask.
Painted wood. Blank expression.
Same jawline. Same dimple.
Same slight crookedness in the right eye.
It looked exactly like him.
Slightly wrong.
"You ever get the feeling," Renzo muttered, "that we didn't choose to come here?"
Lilith's room was at the end of the hall.
She had not unpacked.
She had found something under the floorboard.
A leather-bound sketchbook. Old. Smelling of ink and smoke.
She flipped through it in silence.
Page after page—charcoal drawings.
Three figures standing in fog.
One with a camera.
One with a satchel.
One with long hair.
All walking toward a dark village with no windows.
Night fell quickly.
Too quickly.
The sky went black like someone flicked a switch.
Outside, in the village square, the music returned.
A soft, continuous hum. Human throats. Holding tone.
Damian stood at the warped window and looked out.
Dozens of people were standing in the fog.
Still. Facing the guesthouse.
They didn't move.
They didn't speak.
But one stepped forward.
Jonas Mirel.
His childhood friend.
Dead sixteen years.
He looked older now. But not aged—just more complete.
He raised a hand.
Touched his lips.
Then whispered, across the cold:
Not a name. Not a warning. But a melody.
Welcome back.