Tall spruce trees ring the clearing, their shadows stretching long and thin like fingers reaching inward. Your head throbs, memories slipping away the moment you try to grab them.

Footsteps crunch against gravel. You jolt upright just as two figures emerge from between the trees.

The first one wears green—a hooded cloak pulled low, his face hidden behind a porcelain mask with a simple, unsettling smile painted across it. He moves with an ease that makes the air still around him.

The second man hangs back half a step, brown curls messy, eyes sharp with something that looks like curiosity tangled with calculation. There’s a worn confidence to his posture, the kind that suggests he’s talked his way out of danger more times than he should have survived.