We were going to die on that street.
The roots had us boxed in—pale limbs crawling over broken stone, bending the wrong way at the joints. Joren was already down, pinned to the wall by a branch through his shoulder. Mira's blade shook in her hands. Mine wouldn't stop slipping in my grip.
Then the fog moved.
Not drifting.
Parting.
Something stepped out of it.
A man.
At least… he had the shape of one.
Mist poured from his skin like breath in winter, thick and constant. His eyes were white. Not glowing. Just empty of color.
The nearest root-creature turned toward him.
It hesitated.
The man crossed the street in three steps. His blade cut once. The fog followed the motion, sealing the strike before the body hit the ground.
Another lunged.
He didn't rush. He slipped between its limbs like he already knew where they would be. The cut came from an angle that shouldn't have been possible.
Two more attacked together.
He went through them instead of around them.
They fell into pieces.
Silence took the street.
We stared.
Not at the dead things.
At him.
"What are you?" Mira asked.
"I'm not," the man said.
The fog swelled around his shoulders as if it didn't like the question.
A woman stepped out behind him—bow in hand, eyes on us instead of him.
"We're just passing through."
Joren groaned.
The man cut the branch free and lowered him gently. When the fog brushed the wound, Joren gasped.
"It's cold," he said. "But it stopped bleeding."
No one moved closer.
Someone whispered, "His eyes…"
"They're white," another said.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
The man looked past us, down the street where the fog thickened.
"I don't know."
The woman said, "You're walking into worse."
The fog tightened around his legs.
He didn't argue.
We backed away with Joren between us, never turning our backs on them.
When the fog swallowed them again, Mira finally breathed.
"That wasn't human."
"No," I said. "But it wasn't a Veilborn either."
"What was it, then?"
I thought of the way the roots had hesitated.
Of the fog coming from his skin.
Of his eyes.
"A warning," I said.
We reached the outer wall of the citadel by dusk.
The guards let us in when they saw Joren's wound.
"What happened out there?" one asked.
I said the only thing that made sense.
"A man is walking with the fog."
They didn't ask for details.
Joren was taken inside. We weren't.
They kept us in the outer yard while a healer examined him through the iron bars. The citadel loomed above us—stacked stone and scavenged metal rising in uneven tiers, walls stitched together from old brick, broken towers, and the ribs of dead buildings. Smoke curled from vents cut into the upper levels, carrying the smell of ash and boiled roots.
Mira paced. I leaned against the wall and watched the gate.
Beyond it, the fog pressed close, stopped only by the ward-torches burning blue along the battlements.
By nightfall, the story was already changing.
"It wasn't a man," someone said near the water trough. "It was a ghost."
"No," another replied. "It carried a blade."
"Doesn't