The rain lashed against the windows of the old Victorian house, a house that had stood in silence for over a century. It was the kind of place where the creaky floorboards and the drafts from the attic seemed to carry secrets, stories that had long been forgotten—or maybe never known. Vera Mallory stepped out

It was an unusually cold morning when the fog rolled in over the sleepy town of Ashford Hollow. The kind of fog that crept in like an unwanted guest, settling over the cobblestone streets and the narrow alleyways, muffling sounds and distorting shapes. In Ashford Hollow, things didn’t change much. The same faces passed by

The rain was relentless that evening, falling in sheets that blurred the horizon and cast the world into an endless gray. The kind of rain that could drown the earth if it lasted long enough. The small town of Red Hollow, nestled at the edge of a forgotten stretch of wilderness, seemed like a world