The mist had been clinging to Blackwood for three nights straight. It rolled in from the forest after dusk, curling down the cobblestone streets like pale fingers. Elara pressed her forehead to the glass of her bedroom window and stared into it, searching for something she couldn't name. Her town was quiet, too quiet - like it was holding its breath.

It had been two days since Mara vanished.

Everyone said the same thing: she must have run away. The sheriff shrugged, Mara's parents kept to their house, and the townsfolk whispered over their market stalls. But Elara knew her best friend better than that. Mara wouldn't leave without a word, not when they had planned to sneak out together for the festival lights. And certainly not after the last thing Mara had said to her - "I saw eyes in the woods. Red ones. They were watching me."

Elara replayed those words every night, each time more hollow than the last.

That evening, unable to sit still any longer, she pulled on her jacket and slipped out the back door. The fog swallowed her instantly. Streetlamps burned weakly, their light broken into halos. The silence was so thick she could hear her own heartbeat.

She walked fast, clutching Mara's notebook in her pocket. She had found it tucked beneath her friend's pillow earlier that day. Its pages were filled with half-scribbled sketches of trees, symbols, and - in one shaky drawing - the outline of a church with a jagged cross. At the top of that page, Mara had scrawled two words: "It's waking."

Elara shivered.

The church sat on the edge of Blackwood, long abandoned, its roof sagging and its bell tower cracked. No one went there, not since the stories about what lived beneath it. She had laughed at those tales when she was younger. Now they didn't seem so funny.

As she neared the iron gates, the air grew colder. The grass crunched under her boots though there was no frost. She pushed the gate, and it groaned open like a wounded animal. For a moment, she thought she heard footsteps behind her. She spun, heart pounding - but the street was empty, the fog unbroken.

Inside the churchyard, the mist was thicker, pressing against her like damp cloth. The broken stained-glass windows gaped like dark eyes. She moved closer, notebook clutched tight, when something caught her eye on the stone steps.

Blood.

Dark streaks, almost black in the dim light, smeared across the crumbling stone. She crouched, reaching out before jerking her hand back. It was fresh.

Her breath came short. She rose, pulse hammering. A sound echoed inside the church. A scrape, like stone dragging against stone. Then? a whisper.

"Elara?"

Her name. Drawn out, soft, like it came from deep underground.

She stumbled back, chest tight, eyes darting to the shattered doorway. The whisper came again, stronger this time, curling around her like smoke.

"Elara?"

Her legs screamed to run, but her feet rooted to the ground. She could feel it - something waiting just beyond the threshold. Watching.

The wind picked up suddenly, rattling the broken glass. And then she saw it: a shape in the doorway. Tall, too tall, with eyes that burned a dim, unnatural red.

The whisper turned into a low hiss.

"Elara? come inside."

Her throat closed. She staggered back one step, then another, clutching the notebook like a shield. The blood on the steps gleamed under the lamplight, and the figure shifted closer, one foot sliding forward into the mist.

Elara spun and ran.

She didn't look back. Couldn't. The gate screamed as she shoved through it, her breath tearing in her lungs. The streets of Blackwood blurred around her, her only thought to reach the safety of her home. But even as she ran, she could still hear it - her name, whispered on the fog, closer with every step.

And in the silence of her room, long after she had bolted the door and collapsed against it, she realized something terrible: Mara's notebook wasn't the only thing left behind.

On its last page, in handwriting that wasn't Mara's, were three words scrawled in crimson ink:

"See you soon."

Morning broke in Blackwood, but it felt no warmer than the night before. The mist lingered, pale ribbons crawling through the streets even under the weak sunlight. Elara sat at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a cup of tea gone cold. Her mother fussed about with the laundry, humming faintly, but Elara barely heard her.

The words from Mara's notebook burned in her mind. See you soon.

Had she imagined them? The ink had looked too fresh, too deliberate. Yet when she checked the notebook again that morning, the page was blank. No words, no crimson stain. Just an empty sheet, mocking her.

"Elara, you're pale," her mother said suddenly, eyeing her. "Are you sleeping at all?"

"I'm fine," Elara lied, shoving the notebook deeper into her bag. "Just tired."

Her mother gave her a long, unreadable look before turning away. "Stay out of the woods, do you hear me? Until Mara is found. Nothing good lives there."

The warning settled heavy in Elara's chest. She nodded, though she knew she would not obey.

At school, the air was thick with whispers. Every hallway corner seemed to echo Mara's name. Some students claimed they saw her walking at night, drifting between the lamplights. Others swore she had joined the cult everyone joked about but never admitted to believing in.

Elara pushed through the crowd, her head low. That was when she noticed him.

A boy she had never seen before, standing near the back of the classroom. His hair was dark, nearly black, falling just past his eyes, and his skin was pale - unnaturally so. He wore a plain black coat despite the humid weather. And though he pretended to be reading, Elara swore she felt his gaze flick toward her, sharp as a blade.

When the teacher introduced him - "This is Adrian. He'll be joining us for the term" - a faint murmur rippled through the class. Elara kept her eyes down, but her stomach twisted. There was something off about him.

At lunch, she sat alone beneath the old oak in the courtyard, flipping through Mara's notebook. The sketches unsettled her more with every page. One showed the church again, this time with figures kneeling before it, their hands raised as if in prayer. Strange symbols circled them - loops and sharp lines that seemed to crawl across the paper.

"Elara," a voice said.

She jumped. Adrian stood before her, his eyes a dark gray, almost silver under the sun.

"You dropped this." He held out her pencil. She hadn't realized it had rolled away.

"Thanks," she muttered, taking it quickly.

His gaze lingered on the notebook in her lap. "Interesting drawings."

"They're not mine."

He tilted his head slightly, studying her. "Still. You shouldn't show them so openly. Some things invite attention you don't want."

Before she could ask what he meant, he walked away, leaving her staring after him with a chill down her spine.

That evening, Elara wandered the town streets, notebook in hand. She couldn't stop thinking about the symbols. She had seen one earlier that day - carved into the side of a lamppost, faint but unmistakable. Now she searched, eyes scanning walls, doors, even stones.

They were everywhere. Tiny, scratched marks, half-hidden, but spreading like veins through Blackwood.

Her pulse quickened. The cult wasn't just a story. It was here, living in the town's bones.

She stopped outside the bakery, where another symbol gleamed faintly under the lamplight. As she traced it with her finger, a voice whispered behind her.

"You shouldn't touch that."

Elara spun. Adrian stood in the shadows, hands in his coat pockets.

"You're following me," she accused.

He shrugged lightly. "Or maybe we're looking for the same thing."

Before she could reply, movement caught her eye. Across the street, a figure stood in the mist, watching them. The shape was wrong - too still, too sharp. When a car passed, its headlights swept over the figure, and Elara's blood ran cold.

It was Mara.

Or at least, it looked like her.

Her best friend stood beneath the broken lamplight, her skin ashen, her eyes glinting red.

"Elara?" the figure whispered, voice carrying across the empty street.

Elara staggered back, heart pounding, but when she blinked - the figure was gone. The mist swallowed her whole.

Adrian's voice was low, urgent. "You saw her, didn't you?"

Elara could only nod, her breath shaking.

"She isn't the same anymore," he said. "And if you want answers, you'll have to decide - are you ready to follow her into the dark?"

Elara's knees trembled. Her best friend was alive. Changed. Watching.

The fog thickened, and the silence pressed in. Somewhere beyond the streetlamps, footsteps echoed - slow, deliberate, drawing closer.

And Elara realized with icy certainty: the night wasn't done with her yet.

Sleep did not come easily that night. Elara lay in bed, the fog pressing against her window like a living thing, the silence broken only by the ticking of the clock. The notebook sat on her desk across the room, but she could feel it watching her, whispering at the edge of her thoughts.

Finally, she gave up. She switched on her lamp and dragged the book into her lap.

Most of the pages were Mara's usual scribbles - half poems, fragments of songs, messy doodles. But beneath them, faint scratches were surfacing, as though ink had bled up through the paper overnight. Elara squinted, her heart pounding as the words took shape:

"Why are you searching for me?"

Her breath caught. She touched the letters, but the ink didn't smear. Her hands trembled.

Flipping another page, more words appeared, curling across the paper in the same crimson shade she had seen the night before.

"You're not ready, Elara."

She slammed the book shut, her pulse hammering. It wasn't possible. Mara couldn't be writing this - not from wherever she was. Not in this way. Unless it wasn't Mara at all.

"Elara?"

Her mother's voice startled her. She stuffed the notebook under her blanket as the door cracked open. Her mother's face was pale in the lamplight, her eyes lined with exhaustion.

"You're awake," her mother said softly. "I thought I heard voices."

"Just? reading," Elara mumbled.

Her mother hesitated, then stepped inside. "You need to be careful. There are things in this town? things I should have told you sooner."

Elara looked up sharply. "What things?"

Her mother's lips pressed tight, as if sealing in words she didn't dare let out. After a long silence, she finally said, "Your grandmother believed our family was cursed. That we were tied to the shadows in Blackwood. She called it? the blood debt."

Elara's skin prickled. "What does that mean?"

But her mother only shook her head and brushed a strand of hair from Elara's face. "Forget I said anything. Just promise me you'll stay away from the old church."

The church. Always the church.

Her mother kissed her forehead and left, leaving Elara with more questions than answers.

By midnight, she couldn't resist anymore. She slipped the notebook into her jacket and crept out of the house. The fog was thicker than ever, swallowing the streetlamps whole.

Her footsteps echoed as she moved, every shadow seeming to stretch toward her. The church loomed ahead, its bell tower jagged against the moonlight. She swore she heard whispers drifting through the mist - soft, feminine, achingly familiar.

Mara.

Her name slipped through Elara's lips before she realized it.

She crossed the rusted gate and climbed the stone steps. The bloodstains were still there, darker now, seeping into the cracks. She hesitated at the doorway, heart racing.

The whispers grew clearer. Elara? come closer?

Her hands shook as she opened the notebook again. The pages fluttered wildly, as though caught in an invisible wind, before stopping on a single line that hadn't been there before:

"I'm waiting below."

The words pulsed like a heartbeat across the page.

Elara's throat tightened. Below. The crypt.

She stepped inside the church. The air was damp and sour, the scent of stone and rot. Moonlight slanted through the broken windows, casting long shadows that seemed to move on their own. Her boots echoed across the cracked floor as she made her way toward the altar.

And then she heard it - footsteps. Not her own.

They were slow, deliberate, coming from the far corner of the church. She froze, every muscle tense. The shadows rippled, and a figure stepped forward.

For a heartbeat, she thought it was Adrian. The height, the dark coat - it was the same. But then the figure tilted its head, and she saw the glint of teeth, sharp and white.

Her pulse thundered.

"Elara," the voice rasped. Not Mara's voice. Something older. Hungrier.

The figure moved closer, each step echoing like a drumbeat.

And then, from behind her, another voice whispered - this time, unmistakably Mara's.

"Elara. Don't look at him."

Elara spun, but the church was empty. Only fog curling through broken windows.

When she turned back, the figure was gone.

But the notebook in her hands was no longer blank. On the page, scrawled in crimson, were the words:

"Choose quickly. Him, or me."