Shadowbrook

Prologue

"Under the blood moon, no secret stays buried—only betrayed"

The air was thick with mist the night Sam Harper disappeared. I remember the way it clung to my skin, cold and damp, like fingers wrapping around my throat. The cliffs loomed in the distance, jagged and black against the faint glow of a full moon. It wasn't red that night, not like they say it was in the legends—the blood moon came later. That night, the sky was clear, and the stars flickered like whispers too afraid to speak aloud.

I didn't hear his scream. I was too far away, running along the shore, searching for him in the darkness. But I felt it, deep in my chest—the way something inside me broke, like a thread snapped between us, unraveling everything that once held me together. He was gone.

They told me it was an accident. That Sam slipped, the tide pulled him under, and he was lost to the sea. But I never believed them. Not then, not now. Because I saw something on those cliffs, a shadow moving just beyond the edge, watching.

It's been five years since that night, and I've carried his ghost with me ever since. Every step I take, every breath I draw, he's there, just out of reach, suffocating me with memories I can't let go of.

Now, I've come back to the place where it all began, Shadowbrook. The cliffs are the same, the fog, the chill, the feeling of being watched from the shadows. But this time, I'm not a grieving sister looking for closure. I'm here for the truth, and I won't stop until I find it.

They say the blood moon is rising again. The town is bracing for it, as if the moon itself can bring back the dead and stir old secrets to the surface. I've heard the whispers—the ones that speak of curses, of buried sins, of bodies that never truly rest.

But what they don't know is that the blood moon isn't just a symbol of what's to come. It's a warning.

Because I'm not the only one searching for answers. And not everyone in this town is afraid of what the light will reveal.

Some of them are counting on it. 

"I returned to the cliffs under the light of a blood moon, the same night my brother vanished five years ago. Shadowbrook hadn't changed. It was still draped in secrets, fog, and the kind of silence that suffocated your thoughts."