The town of Duskfield had a reputation for being quiet, but this… this was unnatural.
Elias Ward lay in bed, rigid beneath his blanket, watching the minute hand of his alarm clock inch closer to the one moment he dreaded.
3:02.
He pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. "One more minute," he whispered to himself. "One lousy minute. Then nothing weird will happen, and I'll feel like an idiot. Which, honestly, is better than—than whatever this is."
He tried shutting his eyes, tried humming under his breath, but he cracked one lid open to check the clock again anyway.
3:03.
The world stopped.
The hum of his lamp died mid-buzz. The ocean's roar outside fell silent mid-crash. Even the faint creak of his old house seemed to vanish. The silence pressed down, heavy and suffocating, like the air itself had frozen.
Elias sat bolt upright, heart hammering. "Nope. Nope, nope, nope." He reached to turn on his lamp — nothing. The bulb glowed faintly, then gave up.
Then came the bell.
Low and hollow, the town's clocktower tolled once. Not midnight. Not dawn. Just one solitary strike.
Elias clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from yelping. "Right. Just… bells. Bells at three-oh-three. That's totally normal. People love bells."
But he couldn't help himself — he shuffled to the window, crouching low as though someone might see him. The streets below were swallowed by fog. Not the ordinary mist rolling in from the sea — this was thick, suffocating, coiling like smoke around the lampposts.
Something moved inside it.
A cloaked figure walked with deliberate steps, every footfall leaving a faint black stain on the cobblestones.
Elias's stomach dropped. He ducked lower behind the sill. "What is that? No, seriously, what is that? Monk? Serial killer? Ghost with a fashion sense?" His whisper quavered, but the joke steadied him — a flimsy shield against panic.
Then a sharp pain cut through his wrist.
"Ah!" He clutched his arm, shoving back his sleeve. A faint, jagged mark glowed beneath his skin, pulsing in time with his racing heartbeat.
His breathing went shallow. "Oh, fantastic. Just what I needed — random body tattoos that I don't remember getting. Definitely not ominous."
The cloaked figure stopped. Its hood turned toward his house, toward him.
Elias froze. His mouth went dry, his skin clammy. He sank lower against the wall beside the window. "It saw me. Oh god, it saw me. What am I supposed to do? Play dead? I'm already sitting — does that count?"
But then — footsteps.
Light, quick, cutting through the fog.
A girl stepped into view. About his age. Dark hair spilling from her hooded coat. Her stride confident in a way his had never been. She glanced up — directly at his window.
Elias blinked. His fear faltered, confusion cutting through it. Her eyes locked onto his, sharp and steady, and in them he saw something that terrified him more than the cloaked figure.
Recognition.
She mouthed a single word, clear even through the frozen silence.
"Finally."
Elias's mark burned, searing his wrist. He yelped and scrambled backward, tripping over his chair. "Finally? What do you mean finally? I don't even know you!"
The cloaked figure turned its hood toward her. She didn't hesitate. She stepped forward, placing herself between it and Elias's house, her shoulders squared like a soldier before a firing line.
Elias clutched his wrist, breath ragged, pressing his back against the wall. "Nope. Nope. I don't like any of this. This is nightmare material. I'm a coward, not a hero. Somebody else deal with it."
But deep inside, beneath the panic and denial, he felt it — the same pull that burned in his wrist, a thread drawing him to the girl in the fog.
He didn't know her name. He didn't know what was happening.
But some part of him whispered: he wasn't supposed to.