Chapter 17: Sable Begins Excavating

The fog came in differently on Monday.

Maren noticed it before she was fully awake — a quality of light through her curtains that was wrong in a way she had to sit up to identify. Not the usual grey diffusion, the fog that softened Ashveil's edges into something almost gentle. This was thicker. Closer to the glass, as though it had pressed itself against the house with some deliberateness, the way a cat presses against a door it means to enter. She pulled the curtain back and found the street entirely gone. Not obscured. Gone. Replaced with a uniform white that gave back nothing.

She dressed and came downstairs to find Aldric already at the kitchen table with both hands around a mug he was not drinking from, looking at the window.