Mariela pulled her dark cloak tighter against the damp, suffocating chill of the bayou. Overhead, a blood-red moon bled through the twisted canopy, casting long, skeletal shadows across the muddy path strewn with decaying autumn leaves. In her left hand, a single brass lantern offered a fragile circle of warm light, pushing back the creeping fog that swallowed the world whole. From the misty gloom on either side of the trail, the piercing eyes of two spectral black hounds watched her approach; they made no sound, pacing silently beside her as eerie, unspoken escorts toward the threshold. Before her loomed the legendary Cypress Gate, an ancient archway formed by two colossal, vine-choked trees that seemed to bleed into the earth. Rusted iron bells and weathered animal bones dangled from the twisted branches, swaying gently in a wind she could not feel. Beyond the open, rotting wooden doors, a gothic stone chapel sat atop a distant hill, its windows flickering with a ghostly, unnatural luminescence. Taking a deep breath, Mariela tightened her grip on the lantern's handle, the mud squelching heavily beneath her boots as she stepped across the shadowy threshold into the domain beyond.