The streets reeked of blood and roasted rodents. The sky never cleared—always gray or black—smothering the town in a fog that clung to the lungs. By nightfall, anyone still outside became prey—including me.
I had learned from the best among the shadow hunters, a man who moved like the fog itself. Every lesson I'd survived, every mistake I'd corrected, had come from watching him. It was how I'd stayed alive this long.
I was tracking a rat when the first sound reached me: a faint scrape of boots against wet stone, just barely audible through the mist. My hands tightened around the hilt of my knife, instincts honed from years of study telling me to freeze.
No hero came here. No villain, either. Only hunters and the hunted. You killed to live—or lived until you were killed. That's how it had been since the Great War, and the rules hadn't changed.
The shadow moved before I could react. Too fast to see clearly, but deliberate, controlled. I pressed my back against a dumpster, trying to vanish into the mist. The fog was thick, but it obeyed patterns. I knew how to slip through them…just barely.
A whisper of movement behind me. I froze. Every sense screamed at me: the hunter was closer than I realized. The city itself seemed to hold its breath. The fog swirled, reacting to fear, heartbeat, the scent of blood on my fingers.
Then I saw it. The figure, faint through the mist, and the eyes…white and unblinking. Not my master, but familiar enough to twist something in my chest. I realized the hunter wasn't here for the rat—or for me. It was testing, hunting, learning.
I ducked deeper behind the dumpster, barely daring to breathe. Survival here was earned through observation, cunning, and the lessons passed down by those who had lived—and survived—the fog before me.
And somewhere in the mist, I knew one thing: the night had only just begun.
[Next Chapter: Marked By The Fog]