The morning sun rose — or at least, it tried to.
Thick fog swallowed the entire town of Windale, leaving only the faint outlines of rooftops and streetlamps behind. The school bus that had brought them here was gone. The roads out of town — gone too.
Aryan stood outside the inn, clutching his phone. No signal. Again.
"Guys, this… this can't be normal," he said, glancing at Rhea and Kabir. "We were supposed to leave last night. Where's the driver?"
Kabir kicked the dirt, trying to laugh it off. "Maybe he ditched us. Who wouldn't? This town's creepy as hell."
But his voice trembled. No one laughed.
Rhea looked up at the gray sky. "Where's Aryan?"
They all fell silent. Aryan had never returned from the mansion. What started as a dare — a fun midnight adventure — now felt like a curse.
Aryan clenched his fists. "I'm going to find him."
Before anyone could stop him, he started walking down the misty road toward the hill where the mansion stood. The others followed reluctantly — the silence around them was too unnatural to ignore.
Even the birds had stopped singing.
As they reached the edge of the town, something changed.
The fog parted — and revealed nothing.
No hill. No trees. No road.
Just endless white emptiness stretching in every direction.
Rhea's breath hitched. "Where's… the mansion?"
"It was right there yesterday," Kabir said, stepping closer. But the moment he took another step — his foot vanished into the fog. He yelped and stumbled back.
It wasn't just mist — it was erasing the world.
Aryan looked around desperately. The houses nearby flickered, like static on a broken screen. A street sign melted into thin air. Even the inn they came from now looked old — as if it had been abandoned for decades.
"Something's wrong with time," Aryan whispered. "It's like the whole town's… disappearing."
They ran back into the center of Windale — what was left of it. The marketplace was empty, the stalls covered in dust. A single paper blew across the ground and stuck to Aryan's shoe.
He picked it up.
It was a missing poster — his own face on it.
MISSING SINCE 2015 – Aryan Mehta, 17. Last seen near Windale, on a school trip.
He froze.
"This… this can't be real."
Kabir took one from the wall. His photo too.
Rhea found hers.
All their names. All marked as "missing."
The air grew heavy, and a strange voice echoed from the fog:
"You don't belong here. You never did."
Aryan looked around. "Who's there?!"
The fog swirled and formed a faint shape — a silhouette of a child, about ten years old, standing barefoot on the road. Its eyes glowed faintly blue.
"Aryan?" Rhea whispered.
The boy tilted his head. "He's awake now… and when he wakes, we fade."
Before they could move, the figure dissolved into mist.
The ground shook. The entire town began to tremble — buildings cracking, streets twisting like serpents.
Kabir shouted, "We need to get out of here!"
But Aryan didn't move. He looked toward where the mansion should have been — and for just a second, he saw it. Floating above the fog. Faint, distant, but real.
He turned to the others. "That's where he is. That's where it all started — and that's where it ends."
The three of them ran toward the hill, though the path kept changing beneath their feet. The town behind them was vanishing, one building at a time, until all that remained was the sound of the wind — whispering the same word again and again:
"Wake up… wake up…"
Meanwhile, inside the mansion, Aryan stood before the cracked mirror, now glowing faintly. His reflection smiled again.
"They're coming for you," it said.
"But none of this is real… is it?"
Aryan touched the glass. "Then tell me what's real."
And the reflection whispered back:
"You are."
The glass shattered.
And everything went white.