Long before the boy ever dreamed of magic, the forest remembered.
In its shadows, warriors had once marched, banners bright with arcane sigils, their chants shaking the heavens. They fell all the same. The mist devoured them, one by one, until only silence remained.
The survivors spoke of faces in the smoke—hundreds, screaming, clawing to escape a prison unseen. They swore the mist was alive, that it carried the hatred of the dead. No kingdom dared name it; no scholar could bind it.
Generations passed. Kingdoms rose and crumbled. The mist slept.
But sleep is not death.
Now, in forgotten corners of the world, hunters whisper of golden eyes in the dark. Merchants vanish on moonless roads. Children dream of a forest that burns without fire.
The world has forgotten its own scars.
Yet the mist remembers.
And it waits.