The dense, ash-gray fog hissing from the fissures of the summit plateau seemed to possess a life of its own, swirling wildly and slamming shut over every inch of their field of vision. The air at the peak of Mount Aruna grew increasingly thin, accompanied by an extreme, sulfur-and-decay-laced chill that pierced straight through to their bone marrow.

Rian, who had been bringing up the rear, was forced to take over the lead position after Gani was violently thrown backward upon touching the wall of fog. With trembling hands, Rian blindly swept his palms across the sandy ground before him, frantically trying to locate the track of the descending trail they had used on the way up.

"Rian! Are you sure this is the way? This place feels completely wrong!" Maya panicked, her voice pitching high, nearly swallowed by the roar of the purple storm winds howling overhead.

"I don't have a choice, May! The main trail is sealed off by that fog wall! We have to feel our way along the ground so we don't accidentally step off into the ravine!" Rian yelled back, steadying his voice even as his heart hammered wildly, threatening to burst straight out of his chest.

The five friends huddled close together, forming a chain linked by tight grips on each other's jacket hems—Gani gripped Rian's shoulder in front, Maya clutched Gani's jacket, Sita held fast to Maya's hand, and Dika brought up the rear, sweeping the rapidly dimming beam of his dying headlamp across the dirt below.

Yet barely a few meters into their descent down the upper slope, Rian suddenly froze. His footing felt entirely wrong.

"Wait... hold up a second," Rian whispered in a tense, strained voice.

"Why, Yan? What's ahead?" Dika called out from the back, his voice trembling with heavy anxiety.

Rian squatted down slowly, pressing his bare hand flat against the earth beneath his trekking boots. His brow furrowed deeply inside the darkness of the fog.

"The ground..." Rian muttered, staring down at his fingers now coated in a thick, wet, and sticky black mud. "The ground here is completely soft... like a swamp. But when we climbed up earlier, the trail was dry volcanic rock and gravel."

Gani dropped to a crouch beside Rian, testing the soil texture with a face that darkened by the second. "Damn it... this is definitely not the path we took on the way up. The soil composition has totally changed."

"Are we lost, Gan?! Did we take a wrong turn?!" Maya shrieked hysterically, hot tears streaming down her freezing cheeks. "Please... don't tell us we're going to die out here!"

"Calm down, May! Don't panic yet!" Gani snapped firmly, though cold sweat streamed down his temples. He stood up and switched his headlamp to maximum flood mode, sweeping it across the wall of fog. "Look for trail markers! Every official route has red paint on the trees or plastic flagging tape put up by volunteers!"

They scattered in a one-meter radius, scanning every dead tree trunk and rock face with their light beams, praying for a shred of salvation.

Yet after a desperate minute of searching, the result was empty. There was no red paint, no flagging tape, and not a single footprint from any other climber across the surface of the wet mud—save for their own five sets of boots freshly imprinted into the earth.

More horrifyingly, as Gani pushed forward following the direction of a tattered rag hanging from a broken branch, his steps abruptly halted at the edge of a sheer, hanging cliff precipice.

"Guys... get over here for a second," Gani called out in a raspy voice loaded with unadulterated terror.

Rian, Maya, Dika, and Sita approached Gani with hesitant steps. The instant their headlamp beams slashed across the edge of the stone cliff, their breath caught in their throats.

Right before them, the footprints of the other climbing group—the ones who had registered alongside them and hiked ahead the day before—mysteriously cut off right at the sharp rock edge. There were no signs of turning back, no continuing tracks; those dozens of boot prints seemingly walked straight out into thin air and vanished into the abyss of the chasm.

Maya clapped both hands over her mouth, her body collapsing to her knees in the mud as she broke down sobbing. "Oh God... where... where did those tracks go? Did they fall off the cliff?"

Dika shook his head frantically, blindly patting down his jacket pockets. "No... they didn't fall, May! This place... I know this place from the senior climbers' stories back on campus..."

Rian snapped his head toward Dika. "What are you talking about, Dik? Stop giving me the creeps!"

Maya lifted her head, staring at Dika with eyes blown wide in pure terror. The girl's lips trembled violently as she uttered the name of a place that stood as the ultimate taboo among local mountaineers.

"Eastern Ridge... the Death Ravine..." Maya whispered brokenly, her voice barely audible. "This is the forbidden route... a trail never opened to the public... the place where climbers who vanished decades ago wander forever..."

Silence clamped over them like a vise. The purple storm winds overhead stopped roaring, replaced by a much deadlier quiet. They stood at the precipice of a death drop, trapped inside a fog dimension with no way out.

Yet amid the despair and panic gripping their logic, a strange anomaly assaulted their ears.

From behind the curtain of dense gray fog sealing the path ahead, faintly carried over on a gust of night wind... came the strains of a traditional Javanese gamelan ensemble.

Dung... nong... deng... gung...

The rhythmic striking of kendang drums and the melodic ring of saron metallophones played in a slow, calm tempo—possessing a hypnotic, magnetic pull that drew in anyone who listened. The traditional music echoed clearly through the silence of the dead forest, standing in jarring contrast to the horrific situation unfolding around them.

The five friends stood frozen, staring into the fog toward the source of the sound.

Before their faculties could recover from the shock, a second anomaly struck.

Right behind the thick wall of fog where the gamelan music originated, pinpricks of warm, yellowish light began to bloom. The dim, flickering glow of oil lamps flickered in an orderly row, as though welcoming esteemed guests to a bustling settlement.

And from beyond those oil lamps drifted the sounds of human activity—murmured conversations, cheerful laughter, and the rich, inviting aroma of warm food mixed with heavy incense smoke, calling out their names from the valley hidden beyond the fog.

"Walk... come this way... the food is ready..." whispered an intensely gentle female voice from behind the flickering oil lamps, calling out Rian and Maya's names with agonizing familiarity.

Sita, who had been drifting in a half-conscious trance, slowly pulled herself to her feet. Her eyes remained completely vacant, locked onto the flickering lights in the fog, and her legs began to step forward beyond anyone's power to stop her.

"Sita, no!" Rian screamed in panic, clamping his hands around Sita's arms with all his might to anchor her body before she walked straight into the lethal trap.

Yet the instant Rian whipped his head around to demand help from Gani and Dika, the blood in his veins instantly ran boiling hot.

Gani and Dika were no longer standing where they had been moments ago. Amidst the swirling ash-gray fog, Gani and Dika's boot prints across the wet mud abruptly veered straight toward the lamplit valley, leaving Rian, Maya, and Sita entirely alone at the edge of the death abyss.