The fog rolled in thick that night, swallowing the small coastal town of Black Hollow in a dense, suffocating embrace. It clung to the streets, winding its ghostly fingers around the ancient, salt-stained houses. The sea, usually a restless companion to the town, had gone eerily still, as if holding its breath.

Lena Carter had always hated Black Hollow, but she had no choice. Her grandmother, Edith Carter, had died last week, leaving behind her crumbling Victorian house and a cryptic note:

"Don't let the fog take you."

Lena hadn't spoken to her grandmother in years. Their last conversation had been brief and tense—Edith warning her, in that same rasping whisper she always used when speaking of the past, about "the thing in the fog."

Now, as Lena turned the key in the rusted lock of the old house, the air around her thickened. The fog had seeped through the cracks in the door, curling in lazy tendrils along the wooden floorboards.

Something shifted in the distance.

A whisper.

Soft. Distant.

Not the wind.

She turned sharply, staring into the fog that pressed against the house. The porch light flickered, casting strange, shifting shadows onto the mist. The trees lining the yard looked warped, their twisted limbs stretching like fingers toward her.

Then came the voice.

Not her grandmother's. Not anyone's.

A whisper, impossibly close.

"You shouldn't have come back."