POV: Daniel 

Ashveil smelled like ghosts. 

Every time I crossed its borders, the air changed—thicker, older, clotted with memories that refused to rot. The pines grew taller here, their trunks blackened from storms that had burned centuries ago. Even the earth hummed differently, the kind of vibration you feel in your bones before you realize you’d started remembering things that never belonged to you.

I hadn’t been back since the night my father died. Since I’d ...