Hallowridge in North Carolina moved like a slow, deliberate breath, tucked into the misty foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Its streets twisted through dense woods and low hills, lined with weathered clapboard houses whose shutters rattled in the wind and neon signs that flickered as though undecided about the present. The town felt old in a way that was both comforting and uneasy - like a place that remembered things the people living there had long since forgotten. Even in daylight, shadows clung to corners and alleyways, and the air carried the faint scent of wet earth and something older, something unspoken. Locals moved in careful routines, polite but wary, their glances fleeting, almost knowing, as if they were keeping measure of those who didn't belong.

Hallowridge had secrets, and it liked them kept.

Clyde had come with purpose. Hired by a powerful man, he was searching for a daughter who had been drifting across the country, leaving only postcards and brief, cryptic phone calls behind. The trail had gone cold here, in Hallowridge, a place that offered no answers and perhaps hid too many questions. Now Clyde sat in the diner - his usual booth by the window, a vantage point over streets that gleamed wet and dark under the sudden storm. Rain pounded the asphalt, drumming against the neon sign and turning it into flickering, liquid lines. The hum of the fluorescent lights above seemed louder in the quiet, cutting through the smell of strong coffee, fried food, and the faint tang of wet earth drifting inside.

When she placed a cup of coffee before him, her gaze flicked up briefly, and she said, "You're a stranger. We don't like strangers here."

Clyde let his gray eyes linger on her, a faint, almost imperceptible smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "Maybe," he said softly, voice low and deliberate, "but sometimes the stranger is the only one paying attention to something that's definitely going on here."