Apollo woke to a world drowned in milk.
The fog had invaded during the night, a silent tide that transformed the dell into a bowl of churning white. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, but the murkiness remained, thick enough that the treeline, barely thirty paces away, appeared doubled, the second image a ghostly echo floating above the first.
"What in all hells," Nik muttered nearby, voice muffled by the dense air.
Apollo sat up, joints protesting after the cold night. The relic pulsed in his pack, its presence more intrusive than before.
He hadn't touched it since wrapping it in the cave, but somehow it felt heavier this morning, as if it had been feeding on the fog.
'It's growing stronger,' he thought, rolling his shoulders to ease the phantom weight already settling between his shoulder blades.
