(POV: Ethan)
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You know that moment when something weird happens, but you don't realize it's weird until, like, three seconds too late?
Yeah. That happened.
We were in the common room after classes, half-distracted by a shared assignment and half-distracted by Leo's refusal to use a regular folder system on his phone. The man had thousands of photos, but only one folder: "Stuff". That was it. No subcategories. No albums. Just chaos.
"Dude," I said, squinting over his shoulder, "how do you even find anything in there?"
"I don't," Leo said, completely unfazed. "I just scroll and hope."
He was showing us reference images for a cooking project—Ava had challenged him to recreate a dessert she saw on a French YouTuber's channel, and of course, Leo responded like it was a duel to the death. Somewhere between a picture of a mango tart and a weird meme of a cat with bread taped to its paws, he swiped past something… strange.
"Wait, go back," I said, narrowing my eyes. "What was that?"
Leo paused mid-swipe. "The cat?"
"No. Before that. The foggy forest."
Ava and Sophia leaned over. On his screen was a hauntingly beautiful shot of a mist-covered forest, trees swallowed in low fog, soft light filtering through like a dream—or maybe a nightmare.
Ava frowned. "Is that… a wallpaper?"
Leo glanced at it. "No, I took that."
Silence.
Sophia blinked. "Sorry—you took that?"
"Yeah," Leo said casually. "About five months ago."
I stared at him. "Leo, where exactly were you five months ago? Because that looks like the beginning of a horror movie."
He shrugged. "Just outside the city. Couple hours from here."
Now, I've known Leo long enough to get that he does weird stuff casually, but this… this was different. The photo didn't look like it was taken near civilization. The trees were old, gnarled, wrapped in a kind of moss you only see in movies set in cryptid territory. The fog wasn't just a weather pattern—it looked heavy. Oppressive.
Ava leaned closer, squinting. "This doesn't look local. At all."
Leo finally looked up from his phone and gave a small shrug. "I didn't say it was legal to be there."
"Leo—" I started, but he was already putting his phone away like he hadn't just admitted to trespassing in a cursed fairy tale.
"I was hiking," he said. "Took a wrong turn. Ended up there. Took a picture. End of story."
Except… it wasn't.
Because something about that photo wouldn't leave my head.
Even now, the image was burned into my brain. The way the light hit the branches, the path that seemed to lead nowhere, like it just disappeared into the white.
Sophia whispered, "It looked… familiar."
Ava raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know," Sophia replied. "It just... gave me déjà vu. Like I've seen it somewhere before, but not in real life. In a dream maybe. Or a painting."
And I couldn't argue with that. It was like something out of a memory I didn't remember having.
Leo, of course, just sat back like we were all overreacting. "It's just fog."
But it wasn't. Not really.
---
After dissipating the shock a bit…
I was scrolling through my own phone, when I realized something. I'd seen something very similar before—but not in a dream. In a news article.
A place some hikers had gone missing in. Months ago.
My heart skipped. I pulled up the article.
Yup. Same trees. Same fog. Same vibe.
They'd called it "The Sleeping Hollow Trail." The area was off-limits now. No one had figured out what happened. Just vanished without a trace.
I showed it to Sophia and Ava in a panic.
Ava responded first. "Leo is not allowed to go outside unsupervised anymore."
Sophia said after recovering "I'm going to ask him more about it. Something's off."
Yeah. Something was definitely off.
After Leo came we started questioning him.
Ava raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you say you got lost?"
Leo sipped his tea. "Briefly."
"HOW BRIEFLY?" we all shouted in unison.
He looked at us. Thought for a second.
Then said, "Five hours."
Dead silence.
Sophia nearly flipped the table.
"FIVE?! Leo, that's not brief, that's a full feature-length horror film!"
Leo nodded, completely calm. "Yeah. I missed lunch."
Ava put her head in her hands. "He missed lunch. That's the concern. Not the sentient mist. Not the creepy silence. Lunch."
And just as we were spiraling deeper into our fog-forest-freakout, Leo casually added:
"…It wasn't the only time I've been there."
I stood up so fast the chair almost fell over.
"YOU WENT BACK?!"
Leo shrugged. "I was curious."
I had no words.
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End of Chapter 34.