The fog clung to the island like a shroud, muffling the world in an eerie quiet. Ethan squinted through the swirling white, the lighthouse beam battling it in vain, its desperate stabs of light swallowed by the hungry mist. The ferry that had deposited him on this forsaken rock had long since retreated, leaving him alone with the rhythmic crash of waves on jagged rocks and the unsettling silence that pressed in from all sides.