Camp Verity had been shut for nineteen years. The cabins smelled like wet paper and the dock sagged under your feet. Mara set the recorder on a tree stump while Devon clipped on the mics and Priya filmed the dead waterfront of Signal Lake. "Episode one," Mara said. "Why does a whole town pretend this place never existed?" Then they noticed something weird. When Priya yelled across the water, the lake gave back no echo at all.

A pickup truck rolled up the gravel road and stopped. A woman in a diner apron got out, arms crossed. "You kids can't be here," she said. "Nobody films Verity. Pack up and go." But her eyes kept darting to the lake, like she was scared of it too.

Devon kept his recorder running in his pocket. Gail noticed the red light through the fabric and went pale. "Turn that OFF," she snapped, grabbing for it. "You don't record here. Recordings don't fade. They just wait." She wrestled the device away and threw it into the lake.