The Fog wasn't right. It wasn't just thick, clinging to the skeletal trees like dirty cotton wool; it was wrong. Too still. No natural mist writhed like this, holding its breath. Patches of it glowed with a sickly, internal luminescence, like swamp gas trapped under glass. Outside the rattling bones of the carriage, sound was muffled dead. Just the laboured wheeze of the old nag pulling me, the crunch of wheels on the barely-there dirt track, and the fucking silence pressing in. It tasted like static on the tongue, metallic and stale.
Many folk tend to think, to erect a town one must weave a lattice of roads that wind toward civilization, establish an unshaken order among men, and ensure the sacred balance of commerce and rule. Yet, in some parts of the world there remain exceptions. "Haeven's End", a small Vestige of a once revered settlement now sits behind a thick blanket of woods never touched by any saw. With the deep seas on the other side and nothing but a dirt road cars and carriages barely fit through, nothing much ever happens there. A population less than four thousand and a barely functional university, the town don't attract much attention.
Never fascinated by such oddities of the world, I was never too happy to be assigned to write for the paper. "Fifth team vanished, Thorne. Find out why. This can be THE story." The bossman's voice echoed in my head, sharp as the cheap whiskey he favoured. Right. Investigate disappearances the government's own clowns couldn't solve, in a backwater that sounded like a punchline to a bad joke. Fuck the government investigations. Bunch of blindfolded bureaucrats stumbling into the wrong goddamn shadows. Just my luck. Countryside always creeped me the hell out. Too quiet. Too many places for things to watch. Didn't help that Ma filled my head with tales of backwoods cults and folks doing things best left unsaid. Truth was my trade, uncovering the rot beneath the surface, but this? This felt like poking a sleeping bear with a history of eating reporters. And something deeper, older… a hollow spot in my own past I kept well buried. Useless now.
The carriage lurched over a rut. "Heaven's End". What a fucking name. Might as well call it "Abandon All Hope". No wonder the carriage drivers back at the last real station practically crossed themselves when I named it. Took most of my advance just to bribe this ancient relic and its surly driver, who hadn't spoken a word since we left paved roads behind.
Then we crossed it. A threshold. One moment, the woods were just oppressive woods. The next, a crooked, rotting sign – "Haven's End – Est. 1782" – flashed past the window, and the temperature plunged like I'd driven into a meat locker. I swear the horse faltered. "Stop!" I yelled, banging on the roof. The driver grunted, pulling up.
Cold bit through my shirt. Shivering, I shoved the door open and stumbled out, fumbling for my coat. Fucking ridiculous. Had to wrestle the damn thing on, straightening the creases, cursing under my breath. That's when I felt it. The air wasn't just cold; it was thick. Soupy. And the Fog… Christ, the Fog. It hadn't been this dense thirty seconds ago. It rolled in from the woods like a living thing, silent and swift, swallowing the track behind us whole. It moved around me, tendrils snaking past my legs, unnervingly deliberate. It muted colour, choked sound, pressed down with an almost physical weight. Static buzzed on my skin.
I climbed back in, slamming the door. "Go on," I rasped. The driver clicked his tongue, the horse plodded forward. The Fog swallowed us completely now. Visibility shrank to a few yards of rutted mud and the horse's swaying hindquarters. The woods became looming, indistinct shadows. Minutes crawled by, measured only by the horse's laboured breath and the wheels' monotonous crunch.
Then, the shadows shifted. The trees thinned abruptly. We emerged onto what passed for the town's perimeter – a scattering of dilapidated wooden shacks, paint peeling like dead skin, windows dark and hollow. Eerily quiet. No dogs barked. No children shrieked. Nothing. Just the Fog, thicker than ever, blanketing everything in a grey shroud. Through a momentary tear in the murk, high above the low rooftops, something stabbed upwards – the dark, monolithic spire of a church, piercing the Fog like a stone knife. It looked ancient, forbidding.
The carriage creaked to a halt beside a listing fence. "End of the line," the driver grunted, his first words in hours. "Town square's yonder." He jerked a thumb into the gloom. No offer to help with my bag. Fine. Fuck him too. I hauled my case out, the damp cold seeping into my bones. The Fog swirled around my ankles as my boots hit the mud. Silence pressed down, heavier than the mist. I scanned the indistinct shapes of buildings all dark, all silent. My skin prickled. That feeling of being watched, sharp as a knife point between the shoulder blades.
I turned slowly, squinting into the shifting grey wall beside a narrow gap between two leaning structures. An alleyway. And there. Half-hidden, motionless. A figure. Pale as the Fog itself, clad in ragged, colourless clothes. Expressionless. Not curious, not hostile. Just… empty. Watching me with eyes that seemed too dark in that bleached face.Our gazes locked for a frozen heartbeat. Then, without a sound, the figure simply stepped backwards, dissolving into the luminous, suffocating mist like it was never there at all. Gone. Just me, the creaking carriage pulling away, and the oppressive, static-charged silence of Haven's End. Fuck.