Chapter 1 The Arrival

The town of Ashveil looked like somewhere people went to disappear.

Scarlett Voss decided that was fine by her.

She pressed her forehead against the cold passenger window as Dale's truck groaned up the winding road, the tree line so dense on either side it felt like the forest was leaning in, curious. The sky above was the kind of grey that couldn't decide between rain and fog, and it was losing the argument with both. Everything here was muted, the colours, the light, even the air felt thick and hushed, like the whole town was holding its breath.

She'd Googled Ashveil exactly once before they left. Population 4,200. One high school. A diner, a hardware store, a church that looked older than the state itself. The kind of place where everyone knew everyone and a new face would spread through the rumour mill before she'd even unpacked a box.

Fantastic.

"Stop fogging up the glass," Dale muttered from the driver's seat.

Scarlett pulled her head back without a word. She'd learned a long time ago that silence was the safest response to most things he said. Not because she was a coward, she'd stopped believing that about herself somewhere around sixteen — but because answering back cost energy she didn't have, and she needed whatever she had left to get through the next hour. Then the next one after that.

That was how she survived. One hour at a time.

The truck shuddered to a stop outside a narrow two-storey house at the edge of town. It was older, the white paint peeling at the corners, a covered porch sagging slightly to the left. A single light burned in the upstairs window. The yard was overgrown, the gate hanging open like it had given up.

It looked like every other place they'd ever rented.

"Unload your own stuff," Dale said, already reaching behind his seat for the paper bag that clinked when he moved it. "I've got a headache."

He disappeared inside without looking at her.

Scarlett sat in the quiet for a moment. Outside, the wind moved through the pines with a low, steady sound, almost like breathing. She closed her eyes and let it wash over her, that sound, just that sound, until the tightness in her chest loosened enough to breathe around.

One hour at a time.

She climbed out.

The cold hit her immediately, sharper than it should have been for the season, and she pulled her jacket tighter as she dragged her two bags from the truck bed. They weren't heavy. She'd learned not to accumulate things. Things made leaving harder, and leaving was always coming eventually.

She was halfway up the porch steps when she stopped.

The feeling arrived without warning, a pull, low and strange, somewhere behind her sternum. Like a compass needle swinging hard toward north. Like something in her blood had suddenly woken up and was straining toward the tree line.

Scarlett turned slowly.

The forest edged the back of the property, dark between the trunks even in the fading afternoon light. She scanned the shadows, certain she'd see an animal- a deer, maybe, something that had wandered close.

There was nothing there.

But the feeling didn't leave. It hummed under her skin like a held note, steady and insistent, and underneath it was something else. Something that made the hair on the back of her neck rise-not in fear, exactly. More like recognition.

Like whatever was standing in those trees knew her name.

You're tired, she told herself. You've been in a truck for nine hours with Dale and a bag of chips and you're losing your mind.

She turned back to the house and pushed through the front door.

She didn't see the figure standing motionless between the trees, golden eyes tracking her until the door swung shut behind her.

She didn't see him smile.