We didn't walk close. Not at first.
She kept a few steps ahead of me, eyes on the street instead of on my blade. I stayed behind her left side, where I could see her hands and the space around her at the same time.
The fog followed.
Not wrapped around my limbs.
Not pressing against my spine.
Trailing us like a thought I hadn't finished yet.
Her name was Claire.
She had said it once, quietly, when we started moving. Like it was something she didn't use often anymore.
We passed through a district where buildings leaned into one another for support. Vines crept through shattered windows. Old paper skittered across the road beside bones too small to belong to anything that had walked upright.
She didn't ask about the fog.
Not yet.
That made it worse.
The man she had lost walked beside her in my thoughts. I thought about the man who trusted the fog more than he should have.
I tightened my grip on the katana.
"You're bleeding again," she said.
I looked down. The cut along my side had soaked through the cloth. My ankle burned where the roots had twisted it, but my legs stayed steady beneath me.
"I'm fine."
She stopped walking.
Turned.
"No," she said. "You're not."
Her voice wasn't sharp.
It was tired.
She knelt beside a collapsed wall and pulled a bundle from her pack—clean cloth, a small glass vial, and a folded packet of crushed leaves wrapped in paper that had once been a map.
"Sit," she said.
I hesitated.
The fog didn't move me.
So I did.
She worked without ceremony. Pressed cloth to the wound. Poured the bitter-smelling liquid over it. My breath hitched as it burned.
"Don't pull away," she said. "It needs to clean."
I didn't.
Her hands were steady. Scarred. Not the hands of someone who fought.
The hands of someone who fixed what fighting broke.
"You don't heal like you should," she murmured.
I glanced up. "What does that mean?"
"It means most people out here either bleed out… or they let the fog do the work."
She tied the bandage tight.
"You're doing neither."
I said nothing.
She wrapped my ankle next. Slower. More carefully.
"You've been relying on something," she said. "And it stopped."
The words landed too close to the truth.
We walked again after that.
My steps were measured, even when my side burned.
After a while, she spoke. "Do you remember your name?"
The question struck harder than any hunter.
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came.
There was a hollow space where something should have been.
"I—"
The sound died in my throat.
Her expression softened.
"That's alright," she said. "A lot of people lose pieces of themselves."
We crossed into a street drowned in thin fog and pale light. My reflection drifted through a broken window—white hair, pale eyes, blood-darkened coat.
She glanced at me.
Then away.
Then back again.
"You watch too much," she said.
I frowned.
"Not like you're scared," she added. "Like you're waiting."
"For what?"
She shrugged. "For something to fall."
We stopped beside a rusted bus half-sunk into the road. The space felt too open. Too exposed.
She sat down slowly, resting her pack against the metal. I remained standing.
She looked up at me.
"If you don't have a name… I can give you one."
My shoulders tightened.
"You don't have to use it," she said. "It just helps to call someone something that isn't 'hey' or 'don't move.'"
I didn't answer.
She studied my face for a long moment.
"You follow death," she said finally. "And you keep looking back at things like you're counting them."
I thought of the man who had fallen in the fog.
Of the memory the mist had chosen to give me.
Of the way it watched instead of helped.
"Raven," she said. "That's what I'll call you."
The fog stirred behind me.
"…Raven," I repeated.
The word felt strange in my mouth.
But it stayed.
She rose and shouldered her pack.
"You'll slow me down if you keep bleeding," she said. "So try not to."
I nodded.
We moved again after that.
Not closer.
Not farther.
Side by side.
Claire stepped into the street first.
I followed.
And the fog followed both of us.
(Next chapter: What It Takes)