Carlos
The first time the fog crawled over Ashford that summer, it felt... alive.
Like it knew my name.
Like it had been waiting.
Mom said it was just the mountains playing tricks again, but the mountains don't watch you.
They don't lean in.
They don't hum beneath your ribs like something trying to wake up.
I've always felt it—this pull, this ache, this invisible thread tugging me toward something I can't name.
A shadow shaped like a destiny I never asked for.
A truth I don't want.
And then she walked into school.
Ashley Vale.
Quiet. Sharp. Wrong in the way that felt like right to me.
Like she carried the same gravity I'd been orbiting without knowing.
Like she was the physical manifestation of the darkness I couldn't deny was a part of my existence.
When she looked at me, it wasn't interest.
It wasn't fear.
It was recognition—
like she already knew what I was before I did.
Like she'd been warned.
Something in Ashford shifted that day.
And the shadows shifted with it.
---
Ashley
I should've left the moment the pack crossed state lines.
Ashford wasn't safe.
Not for me, not for them, not for the secrets I carried in my blood.
But the town felt... familiar.
Restless.
Almost welcoming, in the way a grave welcomes a body that fits just right. Ashford had been my home... Maybe it could be my home once again. Until I can find the person that I have spent years searching for.
I told myself the unease was nothing.
Just nerves.
Just memory.
Just the echo of the thing hunting me since childhood.
Then I saw him.
Carlos.
Wide-eyed, storm-touched, standing in the hallway like he'd been carved from the very darkness this town was built on.
I felt the mark before I saw it—burning beneath his skin, calling to something ancient in mine.
I didn't want to be drawn in.
Didn't want to feel the thread tangle between us.
Didn't want to know him. Not because I hated him, but because of something much more sinister than I could tell him.
But fate is a clingy thing.
And Ashford... Ashford loves a tragedy. It thrives off of it.
I felt the forest hold its breath.
I felt the pack's warning curl through my veins.
I felt destiny reach out—claws wrapped in silk—
and touch his name to mine.
---
Damasen
They took my sister in the dead of winter.
No tracks. No body. Just her name echoing in the trees long after the search was called off.
People told me to let it go.
I never did.
So when the killings start again,
I feel it like a bruise beneath the ribs—
the same wrongness
the same hunger
the same thing that stole her.
And now it's circling Carl.
I can see it in the way the shadows lean toward him.
Whatever took my sister isn't done.
This time, I'm not losing anyone.
---
Elara
The visions started soft—
a flicker in the corner of her eye,
a whisper stitched into her dreams.
Now they come like storms. Like terrors that claw at her while she rests her head at night.
She sees the fog bleed.
She sees a wolf with someone's face.
She sees the one she loves standing on the edge of something sharp and ancient
and deadly.
But no one believes a girl who sees what others can't.
---
Knox
Knox doesn't have visions.
He has facts.
And the facts don't add up.
People winding up dead.
Strange footprints near the falls.
His dad coming home pale and silent after a call he won't talk about.
Something's wrong in Ashford,
and every clue keeps pointing back
to something he doesn't have words for.
To something older than all of them.
Knox isn't a hero.
But he's stubborn.
And stubborn boys survive longer in cursed towns.
Most of the time.
---
And Beyond Them...
Before the disappearances.
Before the screaming.
Before the shadows learned their faces
Ashford was already watching.
Waiting.
Hungry.
Something is stirring within Ashford.
Something ancient.
Something deeply violent.
And this time, it's not waiting quietly.
It's reaching—
through roots, through blood,
through five unsuspecting hearts—
for the one who carries the mark.
---