The mist Beckons

The forest had swallowed the last light of day.

Lena Birch ran, her breath ragged, her satchel of herbs clutched tightly against her chest. She had been careless—too focused on gathering the last of the Bitterleaf, ignoring the creeping dusk. Mira Ashford had warned her not to wander so close to the deep woods, but the village needed the herbs, and she thought she knew the safe paths well enough.

Now, she was not so sure.

The trees around her pressed in like silent watchers, their skeletal limbs twisting overhead. The path was gone. She had been following a familiar deer trail, yet now nothing looked right.

Then she saw it.

A clearing, bathed in silver mist.

It pooled at the roots of the trees, coiling like lazy smoke, rising just past her ankles. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and something... wrong. A faint, unnatural sweetness lingered, curling into her nose, filling her lungs.

A whisper slid through the mist.

"Lena..."

Her heart lurched. It was not a voice she recognized, yet it spoke with a familiarity that made her skin crawl.

"Come closer."

Something in her screamed to run. But her feet refused to obey. Instead, she stepped forward, drawn by a force she did not understand.

Shapes stirred within the mist.

At first, they were nothing more than vague impressions—a ripple in the air, a shadow where there should be none. But as she watched, they became clearer, more solid.

Elongated limbs. Faces that were almost human, but not.

A soft laugh, too smooth, too inhuman.

"You walk too far, little healer."

The mist surged.

Something cold and wet brushed against her arm—fingers, impossibly long and thin.

Lena screamed and turned to run, but the mist curled around her ankles, dragging her down.

Panic crashed over her in waves.

She kicked, clawed at the ground, at the vines wrapping around her legs, but they had no substance—only mist, only air. And yet, they held her fast, pulling her deeper into the glade.

A shape loomed in front of her now. Tall, cloaked in shifting darkness, a face like polished bone but with eyes that burned like embers.

"Hush."

A single word, and her body locked, frozen in place.

She wanted to scream, but no sound came.

She wanted to fight, but her arms hung useless at her sides.

More figures rose from the mist—too many to count. They circled her, silent and smiling, their too-wide grins stretching beyond what should be possible.

"Down," one whispered, tracing a claw along her cheek.

"Down, down, down."

Her vision swam.

The world lurched.

She was falling—or was the ground rising to meet her?

Darkness yawned beneath her, a chasm hidden beneath the mist, a doorway to something deep, something old.

The last thing she saw was the trees above her, the stars peeking through the tangled branches.

Then they were gone.

Swallowed by the black.

---

She was moving.

No, she was being carried.

She caught glimpses—a tunnel of stone and roots, glistening with something wet, the air heavy with the scent of rot and damp earth.

The walls pulsed, like a living thing.

She could hear them whispering.

The ones who had taken her. Their voices curled around her like smoke, their words tangled and strange, spoken in a language she could not understand—yet somehow, she knew they spoke of her.

Of what she would become.

Then she heard something else—a distant, echoing scream.

It did not come from her own lips.

She was not alone.

The Underworld had taken many before her.

And it would take more still.