The first thing Bruce noticed was the cold.
It came in through his mouth and nose at the same time, thick and wet, and it did not feel like air at all. It felt like he was breathing damp ash. The taste of it sat at the back of his throat, not bitter, not sweet, just wrong, the way a flavor is wrong when you cannot place what it is.
He looked around.
The mist stretched out in every direction. There was no sky above and no ground below in the way he understood those words, only a soft grey expanse that gave faintly under him when he shifted his weight. The mist itself was slow-moving and pale, and where it thinned slightly he could see further; where it thickened, the world ended after a few paces.
He was not alone.
Other souls were scattered across the grey, near and far. Some sat where they had arrived, knees drawn up, not moving at all. Some wandered without direction, turning slow circles, drifting on as if they had forgotten what they were looking for.
