The fog rolled in before he realised how thick it had become.

  It crept low across the road, pooling in the dips and hollows, swallowing the hedgerows and softening the edges of everything ahead. Michael slowed, hands steady on the wheel, eyes scanning for lines that kept disappearing just as he thought he'd found them.

  The drive south felt longer than it should have.

  He kept replaying the morning in fragments—the warmth of coffee in his hands, the way Willow's hair had caught the early light, the calm that had settled into his bones like something remembered rather than new. Every mile put distance between him and that stillness, and with each mile the pressure returned.

  London waited.

  Samantha waited.

  The phone vibrated on the passenger seat.

  He didn't look at it.

  The fog thickened as he reached the stretch near Guisborough, the road narrowing, visibility collapsing into a pale, shifting wall. He slowed further, breath steady but tight. The radio crackled uselessly. Headlights reflected back at him in ghostly streaks.

  His thoughts drifted—not to the road, but to the quiet certainty in Willow's voice when she'd said stay because you choose to.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  He didn't know what he was choosing anymore.

  The phone vibrated again.

  This time he glanced at it.

  Samantha.

  He exhaled, long and shaky, and looked back up—

  Too late.

  The world tilted. The car veered, tyres losing grip on damp tarmac. Metal screamed as the vehicle clipped the edge of the road and spun, momentum carrying it into something solid and unforgiving.

  Impact came in fragments.

  Sound. Weight. The violent suspension of breath.

  Then silence.

  The fog closed in completely, erasing the road, the car, the choice.

  Michael's last conscious thought wasn't fear.

  It was Willow's kitchen, warm and lit, waiting for him to come back.

  Willow's Diary

  The sea went quiet tonight.

  I don't know why,

  but my chest hurts like something

  has been torn away from it.

  Poem — Whiteout

  If the world erases you,

  I will remember the shape you left behind.

  Find your way back

  through the fog.

  I am still here.