Each dawn, Marrowhaven disappeared. Then, step by hush-step, it became something else entirely.

Lira stood atop a dripping stone arch, breath white against the underbellies of thick fog. Below, the city rippled with silhouettes—cathedrals and doorframes sketched anew by the sea’s cold hand. The mist pressed close, brushing her cheeks with damp fingers that smelled of brine and lichen. She crouched at the edge, her boots slick on the moss, and listened for the right hush—a soft lilt that meant a corridor had finished forming. She’d learned the city’s rules: nothing was truly solid, only persistent in the right kind of memory.

She set off, quick and silent. The map sat folded in her vest pocket, marked with her runes and those of yesterday's runners, already faint at the edges—proof enough that today's cathedrals would drift. Through the nave of a half-formed fog-market she darted, its stalls glistening with dew that trickled from vanished lanterns. Vendors’ voices, just shreds, rose and faded. She snatched a glass token from a merchant’s hand, the old barter: a memory for a guide. The token was cold, almost weightless, the sort of thing that would melt to nothing by noon.

Note: This book contains AI‑generated content as disclosed by the publisher.