Chapter 1
The mist crept like a predatory beast over the steep Andean road, impenetrable and domineering, swallowing the light and turning the afternoon into a ghostly twilight. Only a muted, watery glimmer filtered through it.
The bus climbed the serpentine curves—an old, exhausted mechanical creature with patches of peeled paint and interiors of worn-out seats. It moved over the jagged gravel with agonizing caution, its wheels turning reluctantly, its metal body groaning at every turn as if in unbearable pain.
Elena pressed her forehead against the window. Its coldness seeped into her skin like a silent question with no answer. Nothing stirred her memories. The world beyond the glass blurred into a hazy panorama—here, majestic pines standing like silent sentinels; there, sheer cliffs with deep wrinkles carved by millennia; and everywhere, the mist embracing the window with its damp, icy hold. It carried the scent of wet earth and roots. The mountain breathed around them, invisible and omnipresent like an ancient deity observing the passengers with patient indifference.
How did I end up here? Elena thought, pressing her palms to her temples as if trying to squeeze even a drop of memory from them. I’m traveling, but why? To where? Her mind gaped with emptiness, endless and sterile as an operating room, while her chest weighed heavy with stone instead of a heart.
She stared at her hands—pale and fragile as porcelain, almost translucent when she raised them to the meager light. Her fingers looked like foreign appendages, belonging to someone else. Everything felt alien—the bus, the mountain, even her own body.
"Where are we going?" she finally asked, her voice cracking the glass-like silence between the passengers. "I don’t remember... anything."
The driver remained motionless. His hands, sinewy and veined like tree roots, gripped the wheel with unshakable certainty, defying the indistinct outlines of the road. His eyes in the rearview mirror met hers for a moment—dark wells filled with wisdom and an unnamed burden. His knuckles whitened slightly on the wheel, the only sign he had heard her.
"The road will show you," he replied in a voice like wind whispering through reeds. "Hold on. It’s rough."
The bus lurched sharply to the right, its metal screeching ominously as it followed the curve hanging over a bottomless abyss. Through the torn veil of mist below, only darkness was visible.
Elena clutched the worn upholstery of her seat. She felt the cold of her own fingers piercing her palms—as if the blood in them had been replaced with mountain ice. She turned, seeking confirmation from the other passengers that this was real and not a nightmare she couldn’t wake from.
The old man three rows behind her—Juan, as the driver had called him at one of the stops blurred in her memory—nodded his head in a silent rhythm. His lips moved in what could have been either a prayer or an ancient curse. In his wrinkled hand, a small, tarnished locket glinted, clutched as if it were an anchor in this world of floating unreality. The cross around his neck swayed with every jolt of the bus, casting tiny reflections.
"This isn’t right," he muttered when he noticed Elena’s gaze, his voice trembling like a dried leaf in the wind. "I shouldn’t be here. There must be some mistake."
Before Elena could respond, a sharp voice cut in:
"Shut up." The word hung in the air, sharp as a knife’s edge. "He doesn’t tell us anything."
It was the man she had mentally dubbed the Silent One—tall, broad-shouldered, with graying hair and eyes that swallowed light like black holes. Ramón. She had only heard his name once when the driver mentioned something about his luggage, though Elena saw no luggage anywhere. He sat rigidly, shoulders tense, fists clenched on his knees. An old scar bisected one eyebrow. Every fiber of him radiate restrained rage, ready to erupt at the slightest spark.
Elena averted her gaze, unsettled by his fury.
Her eyes met those of a little girl sitting at the front of the bus. Sonia—the name surfaced in her mind like a bubble in dark water, though she didn’t know where it came from.
The girl clutched a faded piece of fabric, folded and worn, pressing it to her chest with such tenderness it might have been the world’s most precious treasure. A small silver key hung around her neck. She hummed softly, her voice clear and ethereal as a mountain stream:
"The moon is a ship in the sky, and the stars—a path home..."
The melody plucked a string in Elena—stirring a forgotten memory that flickered like a spark: a woman’s voice singing the same song, warm hands embracing her, the scent of cinnamon and the glow of a hearth at dusk. Mom? Elena thought, but the image crumbled like a sandcastle.
The mist outside thickened further, pressing against the windows with predatory insistence, as if trying to seep inside.
When Elena stared into the whitish haze, she thought she saw silhouettes—faces surfacing and sinking again, eyes watching her with sorrow and longing before merging back into the whiteness.
The bus tires suddenly screeched over the gravel like the cry of a night bird, the metal body convulsing before coming to a halt. For a moment, the mist tore open, revealing a small stone chapel embedded in the rocks. Its walls were covered in moss and lichen—dark green and grayish patches that made it seem as if the structure grew from the mountain itself, or as if the mountain were slowly reclaiming it.
The cross on its roof tilted slightly, its black silhouette stark against the gray mist. The wooden door stood slightly ajar, and from within streamed a warm, golden light, unnaturally bright against the ashen shroud outside. It pulsed like a living heart.
"Where are we?" Elena whispered, her throat tightening with vague fear. "Why are we stopping here?"
The driver turned his head toward the chapel, then his gaze settled on Sonia. For the first time, Elena saw a crack in his calm mask—a shadow of emotion crossing his face, something between sorrow and tenderness. His hand, still on the wheel, trembled for a fraction of a second.
"Step out, little one," he said, his voice soft as velvet. "This is your place."
The girl nodded as if his words were an expected confirmation. The smile that lit her face was at once childlike and ancient, like an icon of a young saint. Clutching the piece of fabric, she rose from her seat with a dancer’s grace and headed for the bus door, which opened with a sigh, releasing a cloud of cold air.
"Wait!" Elena stood instinctively, her heart clenching with inexplicable panic. The place outside terrified her. "Where are you going? There’s no one there, just—"
Her words froze when the mist around the chapel stirred and condensed into a silhouette. A woman, tall and ethereal, with hair like silver threads. She stood by the chapel door, head bowed. When Sonia stepped onto the bus stairs, the woman lifted her gaze and extended a hand—pale as moonlight, almost translucent.
"Mom!" the girl cried, her voice trembling between joy and relief, as if after a long search.
Juan groaned from the back like a wounded animal, his fingers digging into the locket:
"It’s not fair... why does she get to—"
His words were cut off by silence as Sonia ran toward the woman and vanished into the mist. For a moment, Elena saw the girl cross the chapel’s threshold. Her small hand rested in the woman’s palm. Then the heavy door closed with a muffled sound. The light inside flared brighter, scattering colored reflections through the stained-glass windows, piercing the mist.
"Hey! What’s happening?" Elena turned to the driver, panic swelling in her chest like a tidal wave. "What is this place? Why did we leave the child?"
The driver looked at her with eyes that saw through her, beyond the visible world. His gaze was weary, filled with knowledge she couldn’t grasp. Then he took the wheel again with unshakable resolve.
"She’s gone. She’s home," he said simply, but the words felt heavy as tombstones. "Our journey continues."
The bus moved forward again, leaving the chapel to sink into the mist behind them. Elena turned to see it once more, but it had already vanished, swallowed by the whiteness as if it had never existed. Only the mist remained—eternal, impenetrable, shrouding the road behind them like a burial cloth.
Elena’s heart—if she still had one—ached. There’s something wrong with this bus, she thought, with this road, with all of us. She looked at her hands again, more transparent than before, and for a moment, she thought she saw stars through them—distant pinpricks pulsing to the rhythm of an invisible cosmos.
Ramón shifted in his seat. Then, in an abrupt movement, he sat directly across from her. His eyes, dark and piercing as obsidian, locked onto hers.
"Do you know where we’re going?" he asked, his voice cracked like parched earth. "Tell me if you do."
Elena shook her head, feeling fear and confusion merging inside her like a toxic brew.
"I don’t remember anything. The last thing I know is..." She tried to dig through her memory but found only an abyss with no echo. "I don’t know. Do you?"
"All I know is there’s a mistake," Ramón hissed through clenched teeth. The words came out sharp as broken glass. "I shouldn’t be here. They’re waiting for me... somewhere."
"We all have obligations," Juan spoke up from the back. His voice trembled like a candle flame in a storm. The locket in his hand caught the faint light as he raised it to his eyes. Inside was a photo of a young man in uniform, his smile frozen in time, his eyes seeming to look straight at Elena. "But some of us didn’t fulfill them."
"And where’s our luggage?" Ramón pressed, ignoring the old man. Desperation edged his voice. "Our documents? Don’t you notice anything strange?"
Elena scanned the bus with new eyes. It was true—none of the passengers had luggage. No suitcases, no bags, not even wallets or phones. Only Juan clutched his locket, and Sonia had held that scrap of fabric. And yet, no one seemed troubled by the absence of belongings, as if material things had lost all meaning in this strange world.
"Maybe..." she began, but the words stuck in her throat. There was a thought, a possibility expanding in her mind like icy water filling the gaps between her cells. It was too horrifying, too... final.
"Maybe what?" Ramón leaned in, his body coiled like a spring. "Say it. You don’t think we’re all—"
"Enough." The driver’s voice, though quiet and calm, rang like a bell in the graveyard silence, cutting them all off. "Answers will come when the road decides. Not before."
"And who are you to decide that?" Ramón rose slightly from his seat. His fists clenched, the veins in his neck standing out like ropes about to snap.
The driver didn’t answer. His eyes in the mirror looked ahead at the road winding through the mist. For a moment, he was so still he resembled a statue carved from some unearthly material, mimicking human form but far from human essence.
A cold shiver crawled down Elena’s spine. Ramón slowly sank back into his seat like a marionette with its strings cut. Silence fell over the bus again, thick and heavy, broken only by the engine’s monotone hum and the wind whistling through invisible cracks.
Outside, the mist continued its dance, forming and dissolving shapes like a mad artist painting and erasing endless canvases. For a moment, Elena stared into it and thought she saw another bus traveling parallel to theirs, filled with people—shadows and reflections, so close yet so foreign. The vision flickered and melted away, leaving only the cold touch of dread.
The bus moved on along the endless road, and the clock on the dashboard stood frozen—its hands stuck at 3:33, as if time itself had held its breath in anticipation.
Elena remembered the last verse of the song Sonia had hummed before vanishing into the chapel:
"...and time is a river without start or end, eroding the shores between here and there."
She looked out the window again and noticed for the first time that her reflection in the glass was blurred and unstable—her features melting and shifting like watercolors in water, as if her very identity were dissolving into the mist.
Who are we? Elena wondered, staring into the white void outside. And where are we really going?