The first kill had changed something.
Not in the environment — the inner region remained exactly what it had been, the fog patient and ancient and inhabited, the shadow worms occupying their territory with the same absolute, proprietorial confidence they had carried before the first encounter. What had changed was the specific, internal quality of Lukas's relationship to the darkness around him — the shift from navigating an unknown threat to engaging a known one, the particular, consolidating effect that successful engagement produces in a person who has been operating under uncertainty and has now replaced the uncertainty with data.
He moved through the fog like something that had stopped apologizing for its presence.
