Chapter 2: No Way Back
The silence was the first thing that struck me.
No rustling trees, no distant hum of wildlife—just an eerie stillness that made the air feel heavier. The city loomed ahead, its dark towers stretching toward the sky, swallowed in a thick, unnatural fog. Behind us, the road we had driven in on was gone. There was no sign of the highway, no sign of the forest—only an empty street stretching endlessly in both directions.
"We… we were just on the highway, right?" Sophie whispered.
Mark clicked his flashlight on, sweeping the beam across the cracked pavement. "Yeah. And now we're in the middle of some abandoned city that shouldn't exist." His voice was tense, but I could tell he was just as exhilarated as I was.
I swallowed hard and turned back to the city. "We came here to find Ravengate. Well, we found it."
Or maybe it had found us.
The buildings surrounding us weren't just old—they looked forgotten, like no human had set foot here in decades. Windows were shattered, vines crept up concrete walls, and streetlights flickered weakly. Some stores had signs hanging loosely on rusted hinges, their names either too faded to read or written in a language I didn't recognize.
Sophie pulled out her phone. "No signal. GPS is dead too."
Mark checked his watch. "My time stopped." He shook his wrist. "It was working fine before we crossed over."
A chill ran down my spine. It wasn't just that we had entered a place that didn't exist. It was as if reality itself had changed around us.
I took a deep breath. "Okay. First thing's first—we document everything. If we find a way out, we need proof this place is real."
Mark raised his camera, its red recording light flickering. "Already on it."
We moved forward, stepping cautiously into the city's depths. The streets were strangely clean—no trash, no signs of life, just emptiness. And yet, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were being watched.
Then we heard it.
A whisper.
Not from one voice, but many—soft, overlapping murmurs coming from the alleyways, from the buildings, from the very walls around us.
Sophie clutched my arm. "Did you hear that?"
Mark spun, camera shaking in his hands. "Yeah. And I don't think we're alone."
A shadow moved in the fog ahead, just out of reach of the streetlights.
I clenched my fists. Welcome to Ravengate.
To be continued…