In this installment, Daniel finds something he never expected: normalcy. A job at a local pizza place, the simple rhythm of work and home, the blessed absence of danger. After everything they've survived, boring feels like a gift.Meanwhile, Brian's podcast has exploded beyond anything he imagined. Five million downloads.

Tens of thousands of community members. Emails pouring in from witnesses who've carried their secrets for decades, finally finding a place where someone believes them. A seventy-eight-year-old woman writes to share an encounter she's hidden since 1952, and Brian remembers exactly why he does this work.But success brings complications. For every credible witness, there are a dozen others whose stories fall apart under scrutiny. A construction worker from British Columbia claims an intimate encounter with a female Sasquatch, and Brian is forced to draw hard lines about what belongs on the show.

Then a retired nurse from New Mexico shares something different entirely: a story of a young Navajo man brought to her hospital in 1992, speaking of being taken by "the big people," and the federal agents who confiscated every piece of evidence before intimidating him into silence. The wheat and the chaff. Sorting one from the other becomes Brian's constant burden. Then the men in black return. Different faces, same cold authority. 

They come with an offer: classified documents revealing decades of suppressed research, interdimensional hypotheses, everything Brian has been searching for. The price? Stop pushing for official disclosure. Become a partner in managing the truth rather than forcing it into the light. Brian refuses

.Eighteen months later, they burn his studio to the ground. But fire has a way of spreading what it's meant to destroy. The attack makes national news. Donations flood in. A major network offers a television deal with full editorial control. And soon Brian finds himself leading an expedition into the Pisgah with a full production crew, thermal cameras, and night vision equipment.

On the eighth night, in a hollow near where Austin Mercer vanished, the forest comes alive with wood knocks and howls. The creatures stay just beyond the cameras, too smart to be caught clearly, but their presence is undeniable.It isn't definitive proof.

But it's evidence the world will have to reckon with.And at a simple wooden cross marking where Austin was last seen, Brian says a quiet prayer for all those who've disappeared into these ancient mountains, and for the truth still waiting to be found.