Even in this unknown place, where his knowledge of anything and everything was precisely zero, Luke was able to find no fallacy in her argument. Further more, his own experience within the fog - an event still hidden from Mia - provided him an opportunity to draw a shaky hypothesis. The fog had taken him away from the back streets of London proper and deposited him in some land unknown. Perhaps that same fog had transported them both beyond the river. When and why was impossible to know.

“… Maybe… I don’t know.” He felt guilty, in a way, for denying her any insight into his thoughts on the matter. He was lying to her. Yet, in voicing it - sharing that he had been transported across worlds via the fog - he felt he would open a Pandora’s Box and deny himself all hope in ever returning.

Mia stared into his eyes, almost oppressive for the taller man, biting the inside of her lip in contemplation. “Should we go inside?” It was a blatantly crazy idea, catching herself off guard in that she would even think it, let alone say it - but she had. The stench of death echoed in her ears, sensing it’s aura coming from within the cabin. Beneath it, a soothing tone called to her. Like a duo in a capella, they twisted and distorted each other in a dissonant clash.

“Wait, you actually want to go in there?” The slight curls, small waves in his hair, bounced over his brows as he shook his head in disbelief - a more frequent occurrence in the last hour than ever before in his 19 years alive. “That’s…”

“It’s stupid. I know.” She crossed her arms, glaring behind her at the spooky cabin, the wooden boards on the outside of it rough and damaged. Cracks in the windows threatened to shatter if so much as a strong breeze peppered it with a light dusting. “But think about it! The fog clears between us. For what? Gods know. But if it weren’t for that, sticking together would be nearly impossible. But it does, and that has made all of this just… a lot easier to get through. Knowing I’m not alone…”

He cracked a smile hearing that from her, quickly returning to a more stoic expression, but not before she had noticed the proud grin. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, pretty boy. I don’t know you like that.”

“Right, so, you’re saying the fog wants us to stick together?” He took a step back from the girl, not wanting to overstep any boundaries with the hot-tempered blond.

“Maybe? I’m not sure. Does the fog have a consciousness behind it, or does it have a will of its own? For all we know, either of us could be a mage fooling the other.” The mere mention of mages and magic once more turned Luke’s stomach as Mia continued unaware to his mild existential struggle. “Still, if I assume the best from you, and you the best from me, don’t we then have to conclude that the fog is responsible for bringing us together with the limited knowledge we have?” Mia continued.

“Then, that would mean the cabin…”

“…And the path leading up to it, yes. I think the fog wants us to go inside.”

Luke strode up just pat her, looking ahead at the cabin. The mist leading up to it - and in a ten foot radius around the cabin - was clear just as it was between the two teens. “Shall we?” he said, grabbing the back of his shirt pulling it toward her.

“Mhm.” She took the black cotton and polyester blend, tugging it tight behind him, following close behind the taller man as they paced carefully up to the weather-worn doorway.

Luke tried the handle, feeling it rough with rust, the device clicked free with just a bit of elbow grease put into it. The door was heavy and weighted inwards, the handle slipping past his fingers as it swung open with a crackling squeal.

“Hey! Careful!” Mia whispered, poking him in the back with a sharp fingernail.

“Ow! Sorry! I didn’t expect it to do that…” Peering in through the open doorway, Luke saw the interior of the cabin, dim with the occasional strip of diffused light hanging along curtains of dust suspended in the air. Mia stared in from behind Luke, blond locks poking out softly to the left of him. Immediately, she let go of him. Luke turned, feeling his shirt loosen and spinning all the way around as the girl darted passed him and into the cabin.

She was greeted by the dingy smell of long-rotted wood. The inside may have been dark and not particularly pleasant, but there was a welcome sight within that trumped the rundown nature of the interior. Unlike the space between them or around the cabin - where the mist had cleared significantly, though not completely - there was no fog to speak of within. It was a sense of normalcy that came with a heartfelt sigh of relief from the pair.

“Luke! Close the door before you let it in!” She pointed at the cloud of white behind him, slowly creepy in with no wind to aid its movements.

He gripped the door, sealing the heavy wooden entrance, a solid barrier between them and the mist for the first time since it had appeared. He pulled his hand away and felt it yank at his bandages, his palm surely splintered if it weren’t for the wraps protecting the medicinal ointment suffused to his skin.

Mia, quick to distract, perused the various objects within for anything of interest. There was a two seat sofa, and a wooden chair collapsed on the side of it’s broken rear right leg. A wardrobe and chest sat opposite the seating arrangements with a table between them. Most notably to the girl, an upright piano sat snug against the far wall. She stepped up to it, clearing a bit of the dust from the top with a swipe of her hand before lifting up the key cover. There, some of the white, weighted keys were sunken, unplayable. She traced her hand from low to high, lightly touching them and feeling the smooth - if dusty - texture against the pads of her fingers. Landing on a black note mid-way up, she pressed it down firmly, an off-tune ping ringing from sharp key.

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Luke, at first inspecting a half-filled booked shelf beside the front door and the items resting within it - including various ruined texts, dirty pieces of cloth, and hard to figure oddities - peered over at the girl. He recognized the composure she had in front of the keys. It was similar to that he had in the ring. The single note she played, out of tune even to his untrained ear, was like greeting an old friend. A familiarity born only through countless hours of experience.

“Do you play?” he asked. Mia brought her hand over the key cover and gently sunk it down over the row of 88 black and white notes. Doing so, she noticed the items atop the body of the upright piano. One, an L-shaped tuning wrench - metal dirty, but not rusted - with a white handle. She picked it up, turning to Luke and feeling the ergonomics of it fit comfortably in her newly dirtied hand.

“I never did,” she answered. “We had a baby grand at home that I used to mess around with as a kid, but…” Her voice cracked at the end, unsteady, before clearing her throat. “Ahem! It wasn’t for me.”

If he weren’t so trained to hide his expression, Luke would have gazed at her in surprise. She seemed the type to endeavor in the performing arts - intelligent and strong of spirit as she was. “Really? I figured you a musician with the way you were staring at it.”

“Yes, actually, I am.” She grinned at him, a cheeky stare coming from her as he had fallen into her trap, eager to up her own ego. “I may not be a pianist of any value, but you’re looking at Haverton’s premier singer-violinist,” she puffed proudly.

“At the same time?” he wondered, unsure if he had ever seen someone sing and play the violin simultaneously. It’d be memorable, I guess, he kept to himself.

“What?” She questioned, her turn to be astonished at something the other had said. “No. How would I even…? I mean, It’s not impossible, but you would have to arrange it in a way that my voice and the violin don’t drown each other out, considering vocal tones and violin tones often overlap in register. Maybe if I played it like a fiddle and composed a folk song? Agnes would probably love that, but mom hates country tunes. They remind her of—”

He watched the cogs within the silken platinum-gold curls flowing down just past her shoulders. He hadn’t intended to send her into a musical frenzy, but watching her breakdown his ignorant question into an actionable idea was more than enough proof that his initial conjecture that hers was a passion for the arts was more than just an assumption.

However, there moment of piece was lost, interrupting Mia midway through her thought experiment. The chime of a bell rang out far in the distance, freezing them both as the familiar sound brought them the chill of a horrific memory. Moment’s passed in silence before breaking. Again, it rung, now closer, approaching.

“Hide!” Luke whispered to her, dashing to the doorway and finding the padded lock broken from rot. “Damn it!” he turned to face her, a third bell echoing closer still. Mia stood unmoving, the ageless woman staring back at her within her memory. That oppressive force, the imminent sensation of death, crawled up her spine, fear superimposing itself over the desire to take action.

She felt Luke grab her shoulder, his large, bandaged hand radiated warmth passing through her frigid skin. He tilted her head up, hand under her chin as his dark pupils stared into her green gems, glossing over in a panic.

“Mia! Please! Look,” he directed her to the wardrobe, loud and urgent, not caring anymore if he was heard. It snapped her back to reality, as he had hoped, the girl nodding to him. They both rushed it, shoving aside some of the dusty, old jackets within. Luke helped her inside, taking one of the larger coats and covering her so that her bright, shiny hair and light skin weren’t visible within the crack between the two doors of the wardrobe. Luke went to shut it, a 4th bell ringing, seemingly now in the clearing just outside the cabin, they could hear the movement of steps crunching in the dirt outside. Mia’s hand caught the door before it shut.

“Wait! What about you?!” Her eyes, a worried look plastered over her youthful visage, begged him to stay beside her.

“I’m too big, Mia. I won’t fit. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. You just stay still, and keep quiet.” Her shoulders slumped as he spoke. The cabin was small and nothing was quite big enough to fit in like the wardrobe for her. Before she could respond, a fifth bell rang just in front of the closed door way. Luke covered her with the large jacket again, shutting the door quietly. “I promise. I won’t let her hurt you.”

Luke dashed between the wall and couch, where he couldn’t be seen from the doorway, and ducked down. The door cracked open, swinging heavily into the cabin just as it had when he opened it minutes prior. There stood a figure familiar to them both. Arms, legs, and chest - in various places along them - were wrapped in worn bandages. Her wooden mask, marked in red paint, glared into the room with intimidating pressure. Blue skin, black horns, and long silver hair. Strangest of all, had Luke or Mia been staring at the woman, her age would shift with every turn of their head, every blink of their eyes. Lose sight of her, and she would become a different person dressed in the same garb.

She tapped one of the two bells on her hip as it rang now a 6th time. A small bell with a loud, piercing sound. Luke covered his ears, trying his best to keep his 6’1” frame from coming into her line of sight. She stepped in, shutting the door behind her and snapping her finger. 5 candles within the cabin lit up in response, bringing a warm light to the otherwise cold interior of the abandoned cabin. She slid to the book shelf, taking a bundle of wraps that Luke had been eying minutes prior. The woman stepped back over the far side of the room, pulling out the bench under the piano that Mia had missed and laying the bandages on the piano cover.

Some of the cover was plastered heavily in dust and dirt. Much of it, around the center, appeared cleared of grime, as if wiped away recently. Her head tilted around, scanning the room. She looked back over at the piano, the shape of an item taken away from the top of the upright piano’s body was marked as the dust had been unable to settle their, leaving a relatively clean outline of it. She reached out a boney hand, touching the case where the item, a tuning wrench, had gone missing. Out, from her skin, mist like the one outside, formed into long, thing ropes. They snaked around the room, hissing as they felt about, tendrils of condensed moisture. The pale woman stepped around the center table beside the couch, no more than a couple of feet from where Luke edged around the corner of the sofa to better hide from the moving woman. Watching a lively line of fog dance beside the wardrobe, she pointed at the doors, the rope slipping into it through the crack between the wooden doors.

Mia sat their anxiously, hearing the hiss beside her. She felt a movement on the jacket, her breath quickened. Then, in one quick movement, her wrist was caught, the tendril of mist wrapped around it. The doors burst open and blond hair spilled out of the large, wooden chamber.

In that instant, where Luke heard the frightened yelp pierce his ears and crack of wood hitting wood, he stood with every intention - regardless of fear - to strike.