Entry Four: The Lantern Hung in Fog

 The fog rolled in before dawn, thick and silent, swallowing the path ahead until even the trees were no more than shadows. I followed the trail by instinct now, guided only by the faint glimmer of something ahead — a lantern, flickering through the haze like a memory refusing to fade.

It hung from a crooked branch, swaying gently though the air was still. The light it cast wasn’t warm. It was pale, bluish, the kind of glow that clings to ghost stories and things better left undisturbed. Beneath it, the ground was scattered with offerings long since wilted: bones laced with ivy, coins turned green with age, feathers dark as twilight.

They say this moss-covered lantern was once lit by the last forest guardian, a watchful soul who vanished when the creeping fog first swallowed the forest’s edge. Since then, the lantern glows only when the veil between worlds thins—when the ancient forest stirs with memory, when it wishes something sacred to be remembered… or something long buried to be warned.

I didn’t speak. The fog dampens more than sound — it holds breath, holds time. I felt as though I had stepped out of the world entirely and into a place made of grief and longing. The lantern swayed again. I couldn’t tell if it was inviting me forward… or urging me to turn back.

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