Prologue – Hokkaido, Japan – October 2018
The wind rolled down from the Hidaka mountains like a whispered warning. Dry leaves rustled across the forest floor, chasing each other in a frantic dance before disappearing into the undergrowth. The air was brittle with the bite of autumn, carrying the scent of pine, damp earth, and something fainter—something metallic, almost like rust. Or blood.
Rei Tanaka tugged her woolen cap lower over her ears as she scanned the thick tree line. The sun had begun its slow retreat behind the craggy ridges, casting long, crooked shadows that tangled among the roots and rocks. The narrow trail beneath her boots had grown soft and unpredictable, and though her GPS device blinked confidently in her palm, every instinct in her body told her she shouldn’t be here.
But she couldn’t ignore the call.
Just two days earlier, a helicopter pilot conducting a routine sweep over Mount Kamui had spotted something unnatural on a small, secluded clearing: the unmistakable letters—SOS—scratched into the soil. A message from the missing, or a hoax from the living? The signal was old, partially grown over with moss and debris. Official search teams had dismissed it—"likely just a prank or a leftover from the '90s incident," they'd said. But Rei couldn’t. She was a local, a journalist, and more importantly, she had a memory too stubborn to let go.
Her brother had vanished on this mountain twenty-four years ago.
She’d been nine then. He was fifteen. Kaito had been full of reckless courage and stories of adventure, always dragging her into the woods, showing her how to read moss, how to listen to birds. The day he disappeared, he’d left a note: “Going with the others. Don’t tell Mom. Be back by dinner.” He never came back.
Neither did the other four kids he went with.
Rei’s fingers trembled as she adjusted the GPS. She was close now—less than a hundred meters from the coordinates where the SOS had been spotted. The dense pine forest around her had grown eerily silent. No birdcalls. No rustle of deer. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
She stepped forward, branches cracking softly under her weight. The clearing appeared suddenly—like a secret the mountain had been hiding all along. A flat, elliptical space where the trees parted unnaturally, the moss thinned, and the sky poured in weak sunlight.
And there it was.
The letters.
Faded, but there.
SOS
Each line roughly two meters long, carved not with precision but desperation. Rei knelt beside them, brushing away a layer of fallen needles. Her breath came in slow clouds. The soil here felt different—softer, disturbed.
Something clicked under her glove.
She pulled back the earth, uncovering the corner of a rusted tin box. Her heart kicked hard. With steady hands, she pried it open.
Inside was a plastic-wrapped notebook. Mold speckled the edges, and the paper had browned with age, but the writing was still legible.
“October 28. Cold. No food left. Kenji saw something last night. Not an animal. It was watching us. Smelled like smoke and wet leaves. We tried the radio again. No signal. Everyone’s scared. Even Shun cried. He never cries.”
Rei’s breath hitched.
The entry was dated 1994. The year her brother vanished.
A crack echoed through the forest behind her—sharp, like a branch snapping under weight.
She turned, pulse roaring in her ears.
Nothing.
Just trees. Just wind.
And yet… she felt it. That prickle on the skin. The sense of being watched. Not by wildlife. Something else. Something older.
The hairs on her arms stood up. Her fingers curled around the notebook instinctively.
She wasn’t alone.
And this time, she wasn’t the one who was lost.
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