The girl's breath was shallow but steady.
Elise cradled the fragile frame in her arms, feeling the tremor in every small rib beneath the damp nightgown. Her skin was cold—unnaturally cold, like stone left in moonlight. Elise pressed two fingers gently against the girl's wrist. The pulse was there, faint and thready. Still alive.
From the hallway, footsteps finally came—slow, deliberate. Dr. Gideon Greaves appeared in the doorway with a furrowed brow and no urgency in his stride.
"She's fainted," Elise snapped. "She needs warmth. Blankets. A proper bed. And privacy."
Greaves looked down at the girl, his mouth twitching in what might have been disapproval—or indifference.
"She does that from time to time," he said coolly. "Usually after making a sound. The first time she spoke, she muttered something about bells. The second time—fog. She collapses after each word."
Elise blinked. "You didn't mention that."
"You hadn't asked."
The impulse to strike him rose like bile in her throat. Instead, she pressed her lips into a tight line. "Bring help. Now."
Greaves raised a hand and clapped once, curtly. Moments later, a thin woman with red hair and sunken eyes appeared behind him. She wore a starched apron and moved with the stiff elegance of someone who had lived too long on protocol.
"Margery," Greaves said. "Assist Dr. Marlowe. Warm compresses. Hot broth. No salt. Her body rejects it."
Elise caught that last sentence. "Rejects salt?"
Greaves tilted his head slightly. "It makes her convulse. We tried broth the first night. She seized until dawn."
Salt. Convulsions. Collapsing after speaking a single word. Elise filed each fact away like a puzzle piece sliding into place, though the image was still impossible to decipher. She touched the girl's cheek. The skin was icy, pale as wax. But her lashes fluttered faintly. Still there. Still fighting.
Margery helped her lift the girl into the bed, layering woolen blankets over her. Then she brought a small cloth-wrapped stone—warmed near the coal stove—and placed it beside the girl's feet. Elise watched as color slowly began to return to the child's lips.
"Her name?" Elise asked softly.
"No one knows," Margery murmured. "She hasn't said. But some of the staff… we call her The Fog Girl."
Elise glanced up sharply. "You gave her a ghost story name."
Margery didn't flinch. "In Briarwall, names tend to find you. Whether you like them or not."
She left the room before Elise could ask what she meant.
The rest of the evening passed in a strange, suspended quiet. Elise remained by the girl's bedside, jotting notes in her journal by gaslight. The girl's sleep was restless—fingers twitching, jaw clenching, her breath stuttering like the wind trying to find a crack in the wall.
Elise studied her face, trying to place it. The contours were familiar in a strange, archetypal way—like a child pulled from an ancient painting. Thin nose. Hollow cheeks. Bruised shadows beneath her eyes. No jewelry. No scars. Fingernails bitten down.
What struck her most was her stillness. Even in sleep, there was a sense that the girl was listening. To something that no one else could hear.
Elise finally rose to leave just after midnight, her spine stiff from hours in the wooden chair. The hallway outside was deathly silent, the sconces casting flickering shadows against the warped wallpaper.
She turned a corner—and stopped.
At the far end of the corridor, she saw a figure.
Small.
A child.
Just standing there.
The gaslight flickered once—twice—then flared back.
The figure was gone.
Elise's breath caught in her throat.
She knew what she'd seen.
She took a step forward, her boots muffled on the old rug. The corridor stretched ahead like a throat, swallowing sound. She approached the end. There was no door nearby. Just a wall with an old grandfather clock that had long since stopped ticking.
Had it been a hallucination?
A child-shaped hole in the fog of her own mind?
She reached out and touched the wall. It was cold—colder than the rest of the hall. Damp, even.
Then she noticed the smallest thing.
Tiny footprints.
Bare feet. Impressed faintly into the dust of the wooden floor, leading away from the wall and around the corner.
She followed.
The prints ended at a locked door.
No sign. No number.
Just iron.
She knocked once. Then again, louder.
Nothing.
She placed her ear to the wood.
Silence.
And then…
A whisper.
So soft it could have been her imagination. Or the shifting of stone. Or breath.
"…Elise…"
She recoiled.
She had not given anyone her first name in Briarwall. Not even the girl. And she had introduced herself to Greaves as Dr. Marlowe.
She turned on her heel and walked quickly back to her room.
She didn't sleep that night.
In the morning, the fog had lifted. Slightly. Enough to see the slope of the cliffs through her window. Enough to spot the lighthouse on the far edge of the rocks, its glass eye blinded by age. Briarwall was no longer a shape of smoke, but a place of peeling paint and salt-eaten roofs.
She found the girl sitting up, staring out the high window. Her skin was warmer now, her eyes clearer.
"Good morning," Elise said gently.
The girl didn't respond.
Elise sat across from her and opened her notebook. "Let's try something. I'll ask a few questions. You blink once for yes, twice for no. Can you do that?"
A blink.
"Yes."
"Good." Elise smiled softly. "Is your name Mary?"
Two blinks.
"Is your name Anna?"
Two blinks.
"Is your name…"
She paused.
"…Elena?"
A single blink.
Elise froze.
Elena.
There was no logical reason she had chosen that name. It had simply appeared in her mind.
"Is that your name?" she repeated.
Another single blink.
Elena.
Elise swallowed. "Elena, do you remember where you're from?"
Two blinks.
"Do you remember how you got here?"
Two blinks.
"Do you remember the sea?"
A pause.
A single blink.
She remembered the sea.
Elise leaned forward. "Do you remember the fog?"
Elena flinched.
Elise saw it—a visible shudder through her shoulders. A tightness around the mouth. A flicker in the eyes like a match struck.
The girl lifted one trembling hand.
She pointed at the window.
Elise turned to look.
The fog was rising again.
Faster this time. Almost crawling across the fields like a flood.
Elena whispered, so softly Elise barely heard it.
"They come when it rises…"
Elise's skin prickled. "Who?"
But Elena only stared.
And outside, the fog crept closer.