Chapter 1: The Stranger in the Fog
The village of Elmsworth lay quietly beneath a quilt of mist. Narrow cobblestone streets, oil-lamp glows, and ivy-covered cottages gave it a timeless charm. To an outsider, it was a place untouched by chaos — but Luna knew better.
Each midnight, the fog thickened, as if the past were waking up again.
Luna Delacroix wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders. The late October wind whispered like an old secret across the moors. She had spent most of her twenty-two years here, working at her grandmother's old bookshop by day, walking the cliffs by night. That night, the pull toward the cliffs felt different. Magnetic. Urgent.
She climbed the rocky trail, her boots crunching the wet gravel. Waves crashed below, wild and uninviting. The lighthouse stood still in the distance, a ghost from a forgotten century.
And then she saw him.
A silhouette — tall, motionless — standing at the edge of the cliff, facing the ocean.
Instinct told her to walk away.
Curiosity made her step closer.
"Are you alright?" she called out.
The man didn't turn.
His coat fluttered in the wind, black and long, like something from another era. His hands were tucked into the pockets. He looked like a painting come alive — or perhaps, like something that didn't belong in this world.
When he finally turned, Luna's breath caught in her throat.
His eyes, cold and distant, held a storm in them. But it wasn't anger. It was pain. Deep, buried pain.
"I didn't think anyone still walked these cliffs at midnight," he said, voice low and oddly accentless.
Luna frowned. "And I didn't think anyone still stood on cliff edges like ghosts."
He smiled faintly — the kind of smile that hides more than it reveals.
"I'm not a ghost," he said. "Not yet."
She didn't like the way he said that.
Before she could ask more, the fog thickened suddenly, swallowing them both. Luna turned her head to look back toward the village, but even the oil lamps were gone now. Only silence, mist, and the sound of his breathing beside her.
"Do you need help?" she asked again, softer this time.
He looked at her as if trying to remember something.
"Maybe," he murmured. "Or maybe I just needed someone to find me."