January 25, 2026

Marshal Ron Hayes had faced the unthinkable before, but nothing prepared him for the creeping fog that began to trail his every step. It started as a whisper on the cold wind, a ghost of mist that curled low around his boots, seeping into the snow like black ink spreading on white parchment.

At first, he thought it was just the biting cold playing tricks on his eyes—an illusion of the long winter’s breath. But the fog was no ordinary mist. It came with a silence that swallowed sound and a chill that gnawed not at flesh, but at memory itself. Wherever the fog passed, the snow beneath him melted away—vanishing without trace, as if reality itself was bleeding into some abyss beyond human understanding.

Ron felt the change first in his mind. Faces blurred at the edges, names slipped like water through his fingers, and moments of his past—once sharp as the edge of a blade—began to dull and fade. Memories he’d thought indelible, carved deep by years of service and loss, now seemed distant, unreachable, like shadows behind a glass too fogged to see through.

He gripped the leather of his coat tighter, desperate to hold on to anything solid. But the fog, hungry and patient, slithered into the cracks of his mind. It melted away the anchors of his identity—who he was, who he’d been, the very essence of what made him Ron Hayes.

Around him, the world grew hollow. Trees turned to skeletal silhouettes, their branches clawing at a sky drained of color. The cold bit deeper, not just in body, but in soul. He tried to call out, but his voice came back as a rasp, swallowed quickly by the ever-thickening mist.

Memories of his family—faces of his wife, his daughter—flickered like dying embers, their warmth slipping through his fingers. The badge on his chest felt heavier, a weight dragging him down into the fog’s embrace. Was this what the Wendigo had wanted? Not just to consume flesh, but to erase all that was human? To dissolve the soul into nothingness?

A faint light appeared ahead—an ember in the darkness. Ron stumbled toward it, a desperate hope flickering in his fading mind. But the closer he came, the more the light twisted and blurred, taking on the shapes of faces he barely remembered and places that no longer felt like home.

The fog was no mere weather. It was a slow death, a creeping oblivion that swallowed more than snow. It consumed memory, hope, and eventually, the self.

As the last trace of snow melted beneath his feet, and the mist wrapped cold and silent around him, Marshal Ron Hayes understood that some battles were not fought with guns or courage—but with the will to remember in a world determined to forget.

And in that silent, frozen void, the fog whispered his name—and he almost did not answer.