The fog fell without warning.
A thick gray curtain, swallowing the road, the trees, the very ground. Elias stopped. Grimm gave a low growl. Ash pressed against his knee, nervous.
Fog wasn't common here. Not at this time of year.
Something was wrong.
Elias adjusted the rifle on his back and moved forward, short, silent steps. Even the sound of his own movements was devoured by the mist.
Everything had vanished. The sky. The horizon. Even time seemed frozen.
A sound — faint, like footsteps in shallow water — echoed to the right.
Elias turned swiftly, rifle ready, but saw nothing beyond the white.
"Stay close," he whispered to the dogs.
They advanced in a tight formation. Grimm sniffed the ground. Ash looked everywhere, ears taut.
Then, voices.
Faint. Broken.
Distant calls, unrecognizable.
Elias narrowed his eyes. He knew what this was.
He knew because he had heard it before, in battlefields and ruined cities.
The fog was real. The voices were not.
Ghosts of guilt.
Ghosts of memory.
He moved forward a few more meters and froze.
Ahead — shadows. Three, maybe four. Tall, thin, unmoving. Watching.
Elias raised his rifle. Aimed.
The shadows did not move.
He pulled the trigger.
Nothing.
The shot echoed hollowly through the mist.
When he looked again, the figures were gone.
Grimm growled low, tense. Ash crouched, tail tucked between his legs.
Elias took a deep breath. He needed to get out.
The mind played tricks — and in this world, a weak mind was a death sentence.
Led by the dogs, he found a smaller path, veering west.
They walked for hours, until the mist finally began to thin, as if tiring of chasing them.
When they finally stopped to rest, Elias lit a small fire and leaned against a broken slab of concrete.
Grimm lay by his side. Ash rested his head on Elias's lap.
In the silence, while the fire crackled, Elias thought:
"How many are still alive out there... and how many are just echoes?"
He had no answer.
But he knew that tomorrow, he would move forward again.
Because at the end of the world, it was that or become a ghost too.
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