The storm had rolled in thick and heavy that night, smothering the sky with dark clouds and filling the woods behind the Greyson house with the eerie whisper of wind through the trees. Twelve-year-old Emily Greyson had wandered into those woods earlier that evening. She wasn’t supposed to go far, but when the first crack of thunder echoed across the sky and she didn’t come running home, her parents, Mark and Laura, felt that cold stab of panic that all parents know too well.

They searched the woods, calling her name until their voices were hoarse, but there was no sign of Emily. The rain came down in sheets, muddying the trails, and the once-familiar forest seemed to twist and writhe under the storm’s fury, becoming alien and wrong.

It wasn’t until the early hours of the morning that they found something.

Not Emily.

But something else.

In a small clearing, just beyond the ridge where Emily loved to play, there lay an old doll, half-buried in the mud. It wasn’t one of Emily’s—no, this doll was ancient, its once-white dress now yellowed and torn. Its face was cracked, one eye missing, and the other a faded blue that seemed to glint in the moonlight.

Laura knelt down, her hands shaking as she picked it up. The thing was cold—colder than it had any right to be, considering the...