Before Forest Mist had a name, it had a sin.

The story is older than the trees that choke its borders, older than the salt-stained chapel that no longer rings its bell. It’s told in fragments—scratched into cellar walls, whispered by those who wake screaming, and buried in the pages of books that refuse to stay shelved.

They say he came from the fog. A man draped in patchwork robes, eyes like hollow coins, and a flute carved from something no one could name. The town was rotting—rats in the grain, rats in the cribs, rats in the lungs. He offered salvation. They offered coin.

He played.

The rats followed him into the sea.

But when he returned for payment, the town turned its back. They mocked him. Called him a fraud. Laughed as he stood in the square, silent and still.

So he played again.

This time, the children followed.

One hundred and thirty souls vanished into the forest. No screams. No footprints. Just silence—and a melody that lingered long after the last child was gone.

But the Piper did not vanish. He changed.

Twisted by betrayal, he became something else. His music soured. It no longer lured—it punished. It peeled back the Veil between worlds and let things through. Things that do not forget.

Now, in Forest Mist, the fog clings like breath on glass. Children speak of music in their sleep. The old well hums when no one’s near. And in the library, beneath a trunk that pulses faintly with warmth, Brian Storm is about to open a door that should have stayed shut.

The Piper is coming.

And this time, he plays for vengeance.