The first thing Cassian Vale noticed was the fog.Not the thin, passing kind that clung to riverbanks at dawn, but a dense, silver-white ocean, swirling between shadowed brick walls and crooked gas lamps. It curled along cobblestone streets like a living thing, whispering through unseen alleys.
The second thing he noticed was the weight in his right hand — a book.Its leather cover was scorched along the edges, curling inward like dried leaves. The smell of burnt paper lingered, faint but insistent, as though it had been smoldering moments ago.
Cassian blinked. The alley was unfamiliar, but not entirely strange — the way an old dream feels when you're sure you've been there before. Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled three times, low and hollow.
He looked down at himself: a dark overcoat, gloves worn thin at the fingertips, boots with fresh mud on the soles. All sensible. All normal.Except he didn't remember putting them on.
When he opened the book, his breath caught.The first page was covered in his own handwriting — neat, precise, and entirely alien to him:
"Cassian Vale wakes in the Fogmarket, holding this journal.He has thirty-seven minutes before the first rewrite."
A shiver ran through him.He flipped the page, scanning lines that seemed to swim before his eyes. Names he didn't recognize. Places that didn't exist. A few phrases blotted out by dark ink, as though the paper itself had tried to swallow them.
Behind him, footsteps.
He turned sharply.A man in a patchwork coat stood in the fog's edge, his face obscured by a bowler hat pulled low. One gloved hand rested on the head of a walking cane.
"You're late," the stranger said, voice carrying a faint metallic echo."I don't…" Cassian began, but the words felt wrong on his tongue. "I don't know you."
The man tilted his head."You will," he replied, and then stepped backward into the fog, vanishing as if the street had simply swallowed him.
Cassian's pulse quickened. He checked the book again.The next line had changed.
"Thirty-three minutes remain."
Somewhere above the rooftops, the city exhaled — a deep, mechanical hum, like gears turning beneath the earth.
Cassian realized, with a cold certainty, that he had no idea where he was… or how many times he had already woken here.