Trenn remained braced on his perch atop the Gem-Croc's stationary head.

  Behind him, the grassland whispered with wind and rustling thorns. Before him, a silent wall of dense fog stood unmoving like a grey curtain drawn across the landscape. A thick blanket that swallowed sound.

  His sonar mapped the hazy shapes of his friends, a short distance inside the Morning Mist. He perceived Ezy’s slumped form on the ground where she had landed.

  She was massaging her side, her head turned towards the slightly taller silhouette of Zeen. He sifted through the gear that fell when the giant dog pounced into the mist.

  It was like a scar on the turf, a clear trail of their scattered assets. It began just outside the boundary, with Trenn’s god-bone club. Mara picked it up and shook her head, her gaze fixed on the gnomes.

  “The One-Eye has a plan. It always does. This is not a coincidence.”

  From his perch atop the Gem-Croc, Trenn turned toward her. “You’re right, but it can’t possibly have known we saved the Armored Dog… I feel like we’re missing a piece of the puzzle.”

  “It can’t be hiding in the fog, either,” Mara said, pointing at a distant Tear of Dawn. “Summoning the Morning Mist creates a trail of tears that leads straight to the rooster god. This makes no sense.”

  Inside the mist, his sonar tracked Zeen, finding one of Ezy’s crutches and helping her rise with a careful motion. Trenn focused his will, sending a silent word through his Message spell: “Wait.”

  Inside the fog, the two small silhouettes went still. Their heads angled toward the edge of the mist. They drew close together in a brief exchange, silenced by the fog.

  Ezy maneuvered her crutch while Zeen began gathering their scattered belongings into a neat pile. He found Ezy’s second crutch. He stumbled in the fog, disoriented, but found his way back to the growing pile of loot.

  Once Ezy was stable on her crutches, Zeen's silhouette gave her a brief, sharp nod. He started to circle their spot while tracing lines in the dirt. Once he had created several layers of concentric circles, he turned and followed the debris trail deeper.

  Within a few paces, his form blurred and was completely swallowed by the fog.

  Trenn’s attention shifted from the mist to Mara. She stood on the ground near the Gem-Croc’s head, her hand already resting on the grip of her bow, her expression set with a grim resolve that mirrored his own.

  "There’s nowhere to go but in," she said, sniffing at the humid air with her lupine snout. She turned her head to face him, her amber eyes unwavering.

  “Okay,” he said, swallowing hard.

  “We're going back in the Morning Mist."

  Both of their heads turned instinctively toward Almitad. The necromancer descended from her high altitude. Her skull dipped in a slow, solemn nod.

  “We have lost our guide, but found another,” she said, gesturing to the distant, shining tear that cut through the fog.

  Mara held her breath. Bow held at a low ready, she advanced on the wall of fog, hesitating only for a second, and her white form vanished into the grey mist.

  Trenn’s focus narrowed to his tethers. Through their empathic link, he felt the Gem-Croc’s nascent hesitation—a deep, instinctual reluctance to enter the silent, sensory void ahead.

  It remembers the Morning Mist.

  The ancient mind would reject a simple command. Trenn needed to construct a new reality for the beast.

  He reached for the memory of the Gem-Croc's triumphant victory over the Husk—that feeling of a predator successfully defending its territory. He seized that raw, possessive emotion, stripped it of its setting, and projected it forward, painting the silent mist ahead as a domain that already belonged to the crocodile.

  He then sent a simple message: “Follow.”

  The Gem-Croc obeyed. A deep rumble vibrated up through Trenn’s boots as its head swayed and its body began a ground-shaking advance into the mist. Almitad kept pace with the creature’s head, a silent, skeletal escort.

  The world outside vanished as the last of the Gem-Croc's tail slipped past the smoke-like boundary. The thunder of its footsteps became a muffled, close-quarters thud… thud… thud…

  A rooster's crow carried from the depths of the grey. It was Dawn’s call, but wrong. It echoed. It repeated, but instead of fading, the sound built with each call, culminating in a loud cry that came from all sides at once.

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  The air was heavy with a damp chill that clung to cloth and skin. Visibility was a cage, a shifting wall of grey that limited sight to a few dozen feet in any direction. But Trenn had a map.

  He closed his eyes. The fog dissolved into a vibrating greyscale landscape. He perceived the thorny trees as solid nodes in a vibrating tapestry and mapped the gentle slope of the ground. The pieces of their lost hoard—camp supplies, chitin plates, fragments of White Metal—were distinct, resonant points in his perception.

  In this blind, smoky sea, he was the only one with eyes.

  On his head, Skate’s surface beaded with fine droplets of condensation from the mist. High above, a fleeting splash of pink and yellow broke through as Bomber wheeled overhead before being swallowed again by the fog.

  Trenn could feel the Giant Moth’s panic. It had been whizzing overhead since they’d crossed into the mist.

  His sonar painted a distinct shape in the void ahead—a long, dense line with a slight curve, half-buried in the turf: the long barrel of the Wolf Kin's rifle. He walked to it and knelt, hissing as his mangled hand brushed against his leg. With his good hand, he worked the barrel free.

  He turned, his sonar guiding him back to the new anchor point for their camp: the large, curved plate of White Metal from the dog's armor. It leaned against a thorny tree, a dense, unmistakable beacon in the vibrating landscape.

  He deposited the rifle barrel against it, then cast his perception out again. This time, he found a cluster of flat, smooth shapes.

  He walked another direct path through the disorienting mist. The black, iridescent plates of Husk chitin emerged from the shifting wall of vapor. He gathered an armful, the sharp edges digging into his forearm, and added the chitin to a growing pile.

  Ezy knelt next to it, her back to him. His sonar tracked the meticulous work of her hands as she wove the thick Husk tendons into a crude, yet functional, net. Her oversized skeletal hand anchored one end to the ground, an immovable vice, while her living hand deftly pulled the gristly knots tight.

  "Are we missing anything?" Trenn asked, his voice close and flat in the dead air.

  A sigh of frustration escaped her. "Zeen's still looking for the mechanism to the Black-Fur's sniper rifle... but it's a lot of small pieces..." Her voice trailed off into the silent mist.

  Mara silently emerged into the clearing, a heavy, broken link of White Metal slung across her shoulder. She walked to the pile and dropped it with a deep THUD.

  "That's the last of it,” she said, as a silent, skeletal figure drifted down from the fog above.

  "I cannot find the Armored Dog," Almitad’s voice boomed, seemingly from all directions at once.

  Trenn’s shoulders slumped. A sharp, phantom ache pulsed where the severed tether had been. He felt a profound sense of loss for the noble creature.

  "Good,” Mara let out in a quiet breath. “One less wild god to worry about."

  A wave of ragged frustration rolled from Zeen as he emerged from the mist. He walked to the pile and opened his hand, revealing all he had found: a trigger and a spring.

  "The pieces are too small, too scattered," he said, his voice ragged. "The rest of the mechanism is lost."

  Trenn stepped forward. "Maybe, with my sonar—"

  Dawn’s crow crescendoed from a whisper to a disorienting wall of sound that swallowed his words.

  "We don't have time." Mara's voice cut through the fading call. Her gaze shifted from him, settling on Ezy.

  "I'm sorry," Mara said, her tone softening for a moment before hardening again. "We have the stock and barrel. It will have to be enough."

  Ezy was pale, her eyes fixed on the bandaged stump where her leg now ended. She did not move. She did not speak. A wave of profound exhaustion rolled from Zeen's tether as he sighed and ran a hand over his weary face.

  Zeen and Mara worked in grim silence, loading the plates of Husk chitin and the heavy fragments of White Metal into the crude net Ezy had woven. They cinched the Husk-gut ropes tight, preparing their scavenged assets for travel.

  But Trenn was no longer with them. A distant vibration had caught his attention.

  He stood still and cast his Sonar far out across the mist. The vibration that returned was faint and rhythmic—the unmistakable signature of footfalls. Three sets. He pushed his sonar's focus to its limit, sharpening the blurry impression into a clear, vibrating image.

  Three figures, clothed in woven fabric. They looked like mountain goats if they wore clothes and stood on two legs. Goat Kin?

  The one on the left was male, his sonar signature dense with the weight of a heavy hammer slung at his hip, and a large, leather tool-roll tied to his belt. On his right was a woman who wore a pocketed apron over an adorned robe. She had jewelry on her horns, in her ears, and a necklace around her neck. The smallest of the three figures was a child. Her small body returned the tremor of silent sobs.

  Trenn’s breath had turned into a roar in his ears. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. But he pushed through and cast his Clairaudience atop his sonar, directly in front of the distant group.

  "We should've reached the edge by now!” The man’s voice was strained with desperation. “There's no way out!"

  "The songs were true!" the woman answered, her voice cracking with terror. "Dawn's Morning Mist is a prison!"

  The child's sob cut through their panic.

  "Mommy, is the One-Eye going to make us kill the big animals?"

  Something caught in her father’s throat.

  The mother's voice became a quiet, level monotone, a sound stripped of all hope.

  "Honey... If we don’t obey, the One-Eye… it won’t let us leave. It will trap our city in an unescapable morning that lasts forever.”

  “The only solution, love,” said her father, resting his hand on her delicate shoulder, “is to kill the animal gods. Your brothers, the townsfolk, the Rabbitling scouts; everyone’s out looking for the poor creature,” he sighed.

  “It's only a matter of time before the Golem Legion kills the Gem-Croc."

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