The bus wound its way up into the mountains, the scenery outside transforming from New Vein's glossy urban sprawl to dense, mist-covered forest that seemed to swallow us whole. The pines were ancient here, their trunks thick as cars, gnarled and twisted like the fingers of buried giants reaching up from a forgotten grave. Their branches formed a suffocating canopy so dense that barely any light filtered through, casting everything in an eerie, green-tinted twilight. Fog clung to the forest floor, white and thick and moving in ways that seemed almost... deliberate. Like it had intentions. Like it was watching us.
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass, watching my breath fog the window in rhythmic pulses. The vibration of the engine hummed through my skull, matching the low thrum of anxiety coursing through my veins. This wasn't my first rodeo with danger, but Gates were different. They weren't just challenges; they were wounds in reality itself.
