The cabin's thin air felt heavy, each breath shallow, too light to ground me. My palms were slick with sweat, a testament to my irrational fear of flying. I gripped the armrests tighter, ignoring the irritated glance from the man beside me.

New York to Oregon. A massive leap for someone who’d spent her entire life amidst the steel and hum of the city. I was leaving behind the familiar roar for an obscure forest town no one had ever heard of: Shadow Pine.

Sounds like a cheap horror flick, right? But for months, it had been an obsession. It started with a story—a missing hiker, the fifth disappearance in less than a year, with nothing but dead leads. The police called them accidents, but the whispers of locals I’d interviewed over the phone didn’t sit right.

I live for stories like this—the ones people want buried. The truth isn’t always buried; sometimes it’s hiding in plain sight. And I had a feeling something dangerous waited in those woods—something I needed to uncover.