The fog tastes like boiled socks.
That's the first thing I think, wrapped up in my wool cloak, hood pulled low, riding bareback on the grumpiest lizard the world's ever known. We're somewhere over the Harrowspine range, but you wouldn't know it. The mist is so thick it clings to your skin like spit and makes the air feel like wet bread. Below us, cliffs probably. Ravines. Goat corpses. Who knows. I can barely see my own knees.
The Dragon is cursing in some ancient draconic dialect that sounds like a symphony of flatulence and thunder. Something about "idiotic girls and their suicidal shortcut ideas." I hum to myself and pretend I can't hear him. My sandals are soaked. My hair is damp. My mood is imperial.
"Why," he growls, "do I let you plan our routes?"
"Because I do it with flair," I say sweetly.
He doesn't answer. Just beats his wings once, hard enough that my teeth clack. A long silence follows. Then, in a low voice that rumbles more than usual, he mutters:
"Fog like this… they used to say it eats things."
I blink. "Eats what?"
"Everything. The unlucky ones—young dragons, mostly—fly into it, wings stretched, hearts full of bravado. But it thickens. Slows you. Chokes the wind. And before you realize it… there's no sky, no ground, no horizon. No stars to guide by. No sound but your own breath."
"Okay. Creepy."
He keeps going. "They say the fog watches. At first, you think you're circling. Then you think you're lost. Then you realize the world is… gone. Just gone. And you're not flying anymore. You're falling through nothing."
"Seriously. Stop."
"It peels away your memories. Your name. Your shape. Your hoard. Your flame. You forget what wings are. You forget you ever had bones."
"Oh for fuck's sake."
He doesn't stop. "And then? The fog sings to you. Not with words. With want. With promises. If you listen, it takes something. If you answer, you never leave. That's why old dragons don't fly in weather like this."
"Well," I snap, pulling my cloak tighter, "aren't you just a warm bowl of nightmares tonight."
"I warned you," he says. "Your route. Your flair."
I look around. The mist does feel thicker now. My cloak's soaked clean through. My skin itches. I could swear something just brushed my ankle — and we're airborne.
"Say," I mutter, "you're just making this up, right?"
He says nothing.
Absolutely fucking nothing.
Which is so much worse.
There are still some shapes below. Shadows through the fog. Trees, maybe. Towering trunks that slide past like silent sentinels.
I lean forward, squinting into the gray. "There—there's still ground, right? Trees. We should land."
He snorts. "Land where? Do you see a clearing? Or a cliff? Or anything that doesn't end in broken legs and my spine through my neck?"
"We can't keep flying like this."
He doesn't argue. That's worse.
"My wings already hurt," he mutters. "Feels like flapping through soup. My joints are locking up. The damp's gotten into my socket membranes."
A gust tilts us sideways. I grip his spine ridges tighter. There's no horizon anymore. No light. Just churned gray above and darker gray below, and a cold wind that doesn't seem to come from anywhere—it's just there, pressing in on all sides.
I murmur, "Please."
He hears it. Goes quiet.
A minute passes. Or ten. Time doesn't work here.
Then, softly: "Hold tight."
We descend.
I open my eyes.
Grey.
Just… grey above. Not sky, not fog. Just blank. Like the world forgot to load the ceiling.
I'm on my back. Something soft under me. Thick moss. Damp and springy. I move and hiss—my ribs scream, shoulder's a mess, hip's bruised to shit. But nothing's broken. I think.
"Dragon?" I croak.
No answer.
I try louder. "Dragon!"
Silence.
No wingbeats. No cursing. No snide remark about how I tumble like a sack of figs.
I push myself up on one elbow. The moss goes on forever, interrupted by crooked trees that vanish halfway up into the fog. They're wrong-looking. Too tall. Too smooth. Their trunks curve in places where trees shouldn't curve.
"Dragon," I try again, more desperate now. "This isn't funny. If you're hiding to teach me a lesson, I swear I'll burn your soup pot and piss on your treasure stash."
Still nothing.
The silence isn't normal. It's pressing. Like something's holding its breath just outside hearing.
I get to my knees. Everything aches. My cloak is missing. My sandals too. My hair's wet and matted to my cheek. My thighs are scraped. There's a smudge of something black on my palm. Not blood. Not mud. Ink?
"Please," I whisper, not sure who it's to anymore.
No reply.
Just moss. Fog. And those awful, silent trees.
A voice crackles out of the mist, dry as burnt herbs.
"Lost, are we?"
I whip around, half-falling in the moss. There, just a few paces away, is a hunched figure wrapped in wet, green-smudged wool, standing crooked under a crooked tree.
The swamp hag.
Of course it's the swamp hag.
She's got that same rat's nest of hair, streaked with feathers and what might be a fishbone crown. Her feet are bare, toes like roots. Her eyes are murky marbles. She smells like old tea and bat piss.
"You again," I mutter.
She cocks her head. "Didn't expect you in this part o' the world. Fog's thick here. Gets into the cracks. Makes folk forget they have knees."
"I lost my dragon," I say.
She nods like I just told her I sat in soup. "Stupid girl."
"I didn't mean to lose him."
"No one means to walk into the fog and drop their brains out their earholes," she says, coming closer. Her toenails squelch in the moss. "And yet."
I blink hard. "What is this place?"
She leans down so close I can smell her breath—licorice root and grave dirt.
"Some call it the Loamfold. Some call it the Fading Edge. Me? I call it Tuesday."
"What's going to happen to me?" I ask.
It slips out before I can coat it in sarcasm. My voice sounds small. Too thin for the fog.
The hag grins. Gums mostly. "That depends, don't it."
"On what?"
"On whether you scream when the moss gets teeth."
I flinch. She cackles like a kettle boiling dry.
I push myself up to standing, knees shaking. "Where's my Dragon?"
She raises a brow. "Yours, is he? My my. We got ourselves a mistress of wyrms."
"Don't play with me, hag. He was flying. I fell. He wouldn't just leave me."
"Maybe he forgot you," she says, voice turning sing-song. "That's what this place does. Forgets things. Eats their names. Slips their faces off like socks."
"No," I say. Too fast.
"Ohhh yes," she purrs, stepping around me now. "Maybe he's circlin' up there still. Or maybe he's landed somewhere else. Maybe he's curled up on a cliff all alone, wondering why his back hurts and who packed a cursed cheese in his saddle net."
I clench my fists. "Stop it."
"Maybe," she whispers, "the fog took him first."
Silence. Just the drip of water from invisible branches.
Saya stares at her. "Why are you here?"
She shrugs. "Same reason I'm everywhere. Trouble's like mildew—it always grows where I've walked."
The hag stops pacing. Her eyes fix on me like pins through silk.
"You've been dancing too long on threads not yours, girl," she says. "Making games with forces deeper than dragon bones. You keep poking old powers and grinning like it's foreplay."
I swallow. The air is heavier now. The moss under my feet feels warmer. Breathing.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," she says, "some doors don't shut once you peek in. Some names don't forget being spoken. And some debts…" She leans closer. Her breath smells like mushrooms and old meat. "Some debts collect you."
"I didn't ask for any of this," I whisper.
She laughs. "No one ever does. Still ends up theirs."
Then she straightens, bones crackling like wet twigs. Raises one wrinkled hand. Points a crooked finger right between my eyes.
"On the count of three," she says, "you're going to wake up where you need to be. Not where you want to be. Where something's waitin'. Or maybe someone. Hard to say with these mists."
I try to protest.
She ignores it.
"One."
The fog gets louder. Like wind in water. Like breath behind walls.
"Two."
The trees bend. Or bow. Or maybe they were never trees at all.
"Three."
Black.