The air smelled like damp moss and something older, something buried beneath the earth.
Jeremy pulled his hood tighter. The others had wandered off, laughing, tripping over roots, chasing the mist. He stayed behind, watching. Always watching.
“You coming or what?” Claire’s voice was sharp, a needle prick to his thoughts.
He hesitated. “Yeah. Just—”
The trees loomed, their branches stretching like skeletal fingers. The fog curled around his ankles, rising, whispering. The others had vanished into it. He stepped forward.
His foot sank. The ground was soft here, too soft.
He yanked his leg up and saw the hole. No, not a hole—a mouth. Dark, wet, waiting. A chill wrapped around his spine.
Jeremy backed away.
A voice, thin and stretched, drifted from the mist. “Jeremy… Come on, man…”
He swallowed hard. That wasn’t Claire’s voice. It wasn’t anyone’s voice.
Something shifted in the fog, something with too many legs.
His breath hitched. His friends had gone ahead, but they were gone gone, weren’t they? Swallowed.
The air was wrong now. Too still. The trees weren’t trees anymore—they were watching.
The whisper came again, closer. “You coming or what?”
A hand clamped around his wrist.
He screamed.
The mountain answered.
