He looked back at the file name. He realized the "595" wasn't a random string of numbers. It was a countdown. And according to his system clock, he had exactly five minutes and ninety-five seconds before the file deleted itself—and took his memory of the video with it.

In the video, Elias’s hand reached into the frame. He grabbed the brass handle.

On screen, the fog began to bleed. Not thinning, but turning a deep, bruised violet. Out of the haze, a shape began to resolve—not a building or a mountain, but a door. A free-standing, Victorian oak door, perfectly polished, sitting in the middle of a frozen wasteland.

Then, the file hit the mark. The screen turned into a kaleidoscope of digital artifacts—bright greens and hot pinks tearing the image apart. The audio spiked into a deafening screech of static that sounded like a thousand birds trapped in a tin can. The video ended.

Elias sat in the silence of his office. He looked at his hand—the one that had reached for the door in the video. There was a faint, jagged scar running across his palm that hadn't been there when he woke up that morning.

The door creaked open. For a split second, the camera caught a glimpse of what lay beyond: a forest where the leaves were made of glass and the sky was the color of a guttering candle.

"I have to know where they went," the recorded Elias replied.

Elias remembered that date—December 16, 2022. It was the day of the Great Fog, the afternoon the coastal town of Oakhaven simply vanished from the maps for six hours. No cell service, no GPS, just a wall of white. He clicked "Open."