"It's talking to him—he's going to bring about all of our dooms," the woman hissed, backing away as though his shadow burned her.
The accusation hit the group like a thrown stone.Faces turned toward him—fearful, hollow, desperate.
He felt the pulse in his leg again. Not pain. Direction. A pull.
He steadied himself, breathing hard. "I'm not here to doom anyone."
The broad-shouldered man shook his head. "Then why is it speaking through you? Why does the fog avoid you?"
"I don't know," he snapped back—and then stopped. Because something inside him tugged again. A faint, spatial pressure. Like the way a person can feel where a sound is coming from, except this wasn't hearing. It was knowing.
He turned without thinking, staring into a wall of thick fog between two leaning trees. The others watched him, shivering. "It's there," he whispered.
The older woman covered her mouth. "How would you know that?"
He didn't have an answer. He just felt it—an instinct that wasn't his. A wrongness beneath the earth in that direction, a heartbeat waiting.
The youngest survivor—a girl no more than nineteen—stood up, trembling."If it's there," she said in a tiny voice, "can we… go away from it? Can we get out?"
The broad-shouldered man rubbed his temples, trembling. "We've tried. No matter which direction we walk, the fog folds back on us. The ground repeats. Paths vanish."
"It wants us lost," someone muttered.
"No." The word slipped out of him before he understood it.
They all turned.
"What do you mean, no?" the woman demanded.
He swallowed, the pulse in his leg throbbing in agreement with his next words.
"It doesn't want you lost." A beat. "It wants those like me guided."
The camp exploded into murmurs and curses, some backing away from him entirely.
He raised both hands. "Listen—if the valley wants me somewhere, then maybe that means I can find where it is. And if I can find where it is…"
A silence fell.
"You can find where it's hiding," the girl whispered, eyes widening with fragile hope.
Another tug—a sharp one—pulled through his leg like a compass needle jerking toward true north. He winced and pointed toward the choking fog between the twisted trees.
"It's close," he said. "Not the heart of it—not the thing in the hollow. But… something like a doorway."
A man stepped forward, eyes wild. "A way out?"
"Or a trap," the older woman croaked.
"Everything here is a trap," the broad-shouldered man murmured. "But at least this one might lead somewhere new."
A sudden shriek echoed in the distance—something human-shaped, but wrong, stumbling blindly through the fog. The survivors flinched.
"We don't have time," the girl whispered. "They're getting closer. The ones who forgot too much." He looked around the group—tired, terrified, breaking. And he realized something: Even if the valley was using him as bait, he was still the only one who could feel where its presence coiled thickest. The only one who could sense the seams in the fog.
The only one who could lead them anywhere but here. He nodded once, grimly. "Pack what you can. We move in five minutes."
The broad-shouldered man stared at him. "Where to?"
He pointed again to the trees—the direction buzzing under his skin, alive with something unseen. "Toward the thing that's watching us," he said. "And if we're lucky out of here."
Behind him, the fog shifted. Not retreating. Waiting.
The fog thickened as though hearing their plans, curling in slow, deliberate coils between the trees. It didn't move like vapor. It moved like something with intent.
He tore strips from his ruined shirt and tied them tighter around his thigh, ignoring the shuddering pulse beneath the skin. The others scrambled to gather what little they had—scraps of fabric, dull pieces of metal, sticks carved into makeshift stakes. Nobody spoke. Even breathing seemed too loud.
Only the occasional mutter of someone forgetting their own task broke the silence:
"What was I looking for?"
"I had it—where did it go?"
"What was I… doing?"
Each time someone faltered, another gently redirected them. They were all terrified of turning into the stumbling creatures that roamed the fog—lost minds in lost bodies.
He was the only one who didn't forget. And they watched him because of it.
The mist churned as he stepped toward the narrow opening between the twisted trees. The pull inside him sharpened—clear, insistent. "It's stronger now, I know where it is" he said quietly.
The broad-shouldered man approached, gripping a broken branch like a club. "Stronger good or stronger bad?"
He shook his head. "Stronger certain."
The group exchanged uneasy looks. Behind them, a distant groan rolled through the trees—wet, strained, and growing closer.
He'd learned the girls name was Kara she grabbed his sleeve. "We have to move. Now."
He led the way, stepping into the milky air. The mist pressed against his skin the moment he entered, cool and quivering like something alive trying to read him.
The others hesitated. He didn't turn around. The pull in his leg drew him forward, threading through the forest like a buried wire.
"This way," he said.
Branches knotted overhead, twisting tighter the deeper they went. The ground felt spongy, almost breathing beneath their feet. Every few steps, someone gasped or slapped at the air, swearing they saw a figure beside them.
"Don't look at the shapes," he warned, though he didn't know how he knew this.He simply did.
"What shapes?" one of the men asked.
"They're not there," he said."That's why you can't look at them."
Kara whimpered softly. "Why, can you see where to go?"
He didn't answer—not because he refused, but because he couldn't explain what was happening inside him. The pulse in his leg wasn't pain anymore but guidance. Each throb pointed him like a compass toward an unseen target.
And with each step, he felt less like he was resisting the valley and more like he was moving with it.
"It's close," he murmured.
The trees thinned abruptly, revealing a clearing. The fog here swirled upward as if sucked toward a single point at the center—a cracked mound of stone, half-swallowed by dirt and roots.
The air thrummed around it.
One of the survivors whispered, "A ruin?"
Another nodded his head. "It's all run down."
The woman who had accused him earlier stepped back, trembling violently. "No. No, we're too close. We shouldn't be here. This place—this place is where the others started to change."
He felt his throat tighten.
Change. The pulse under his skin hammered with sudden intensity.
"It's not just a ruin," he said."It's where the valley feeds."
They didn't understand the words, but they understood his tone. Several backed away immediately. Kara tugged on his sleeve again. "You said this might be a doorway."
"It might." He swallowed. "Or a mouth." A deep rumble rolled beneath the earth—so low it felt like the ground exhaled. Then the fog behind them parted. Something stumbled out. Human-shaped. But wrong.
A face stretched too long, eyes too wide, skin blotched with mold-like gray. It moaned, reaching toward them with trembling fingers.
One of the men choked. "That was—God, that was Jerren. We left him yesterday. He wasn't—he could still talk—he wasn't like... that—"
Kara screamed as three more figures appeared behind the first, drifting through the fog like puppets moving on broken strings.
The broad-shouldered man grabbed him by the arm."What now?!" he barked.
He tore his gaze from the shambling figures and turned back toward the stone mound, feeling the pull in his leg intensify until it almost hurt.
"We have to go through," he said.
"Through what?!" the woman cried.
He stepped forward, pressing his hand against the cracked surface of the stone. It was warm. And it pulsed back.
A seam of darkness opened down the middle, widening like an eye slowly waking. Behind him, the shambling figures broke into a run. And the doorway of living stone yawned open.
"Hurry before it closes!" he shouted.