The fog didn't climb — it rose.Like a tide, like a living wall, it swelled upward, blotting out the faint silver of the moon. Jonas backed away from the edge of the rooftop, heart hammering, the air thick enough to chew. Tendrils lashed over the parapet, curling like the fingers of a drowned man clawing his way up from black water.
The first shape emerged with a sound like tearing fabric — not skin or cloth, but reality itself. A tall figure stepped forward, its outline human only in the loosest sense. Shoulders too broad, head elongated, arms ending in knotted joints that gleamed wetly under the streetlight glow.
It spoke before its mouth formed."Jonas Cole."
Jonas froze. His name shouldn't echo in his bones. But it did.
"I don't know you," he said, voice cracking, forcing the words past a throat that felt too tight.
"You will," the thing said. And with each syllable, the fog thickened, pressing in on him. "You already did, once. Before you were born."
Jonas tried to step back, but his boot caught on the rooftop ledge. "I don't know what you want."
"I want," the thing said, "what I always take. My count. My collection. You are… late."
From the streets below, a bell tolled. One… two… three… The sound punched straight into Jonas's chest, the same way it had on the night the fog first returned. By the fifth toll, his vision blurred. By the seventh, the fog had wrapped around his legs.
Jonas drew the rusted pry bar from his belt — the same one he'd used to break open the cellar door in Chapter 16 — and swung hard at the thing's head.
It didn't dodge. The metal connected with a sickly thunk. The head tilted sideways, more curious than hurt. "Still trying steel," it murmured. "It never works."
The fog surged. Jonas's feet left the roof.
He landed not in the street, but in another street — one where the buildings leaned inward like they were eavesdropping, windows shuttered, doors breathing faintly. The air here had no sound except his own breath.
"Welcome to the Hollow Quarter," the voice said — now not in front of him, but behind.
Jonas spun. The figure was closer now, details sharper: flesh the color of ash, veins crawling across the surface like worms under glass. In place of eyes, it had two recessed hollows that swirled with dim red light.
"I don't want to be here," Jonas said, stepping back.
"None of them did," the Hollow King replied. "Not in 1896. Not in 1923. Not in 1950. Not in 1977. Not in 2004. And not now."
Jonas's gut twisted. "Every twenty-seven years."
The thing's head tilted. "Some of you remember. Not for long. But you—" It stepped closer, and Jonas smelled earth and burnt copper. "You don't forget. That makes you dangerous."
Jonas's hand tightened on the pry bar. "Then maybe I'm dangerous enough to kill you."
"You could try," the Hollow King said, smiling without lips. "But you'll have to survive my counting first."
The bell tolled again — not in the distance, but inside his skull. Each strike sent a jolt down his spine, his vision flickering with images that weren't his own: a woman in a red coat screaming on a fog-covered pier, a child being pulled backward into an alley by something unseen, a man hammering nails into his own shadow to keep it from moving.
Jonas dropped to one knee, gritting his teeth. "Stop—"
The King bent, bringing that eyeless face close. "Survive," it whispered. "Then you may leave."
The fog shifted. Shapes began to emerge from it — not full people, but partial: a head here, an arm there, bodies stitched together from pieces of memory. Their mouths moved in silence, but Jonas could hear them inside. Pleading. Threatening. Weeping.
Jonas ran.
The street in this Hollow Quarter stretched and warped, buildings dragging sideways to block him. Doors opened where there hadn't been any, each leading to rooms filled with fog. A figure lurched through one doorway, a half-formed man in a suit, his face inside out.
Jonas swung the pry bar. It passed through with the resistance of water. The figure's head snapped up anyway, mouth splitting into a vertical wound. It screamed without sound — and the fog behind it pulsed like a heartbeat.
Jonas burst out into a square. In the center stood a statue — a man in chains, head bowed — but the chains were breathing, tightening and loosening with every toll of the unseen bell.
"Do you want to know what the count means?" the Hollow King asked from nowhere and everywhere.
"No," Jonas panted. "I just want out."
"It is not bodies I count, Jonas Cole," the voice said. "It is breaths. And you only have eight left."
Jonas's chest burned. He tried to take a deep inhale, but the fog filled his lungs like damp ash.
He forced himself forward, toward the edge of the square — and then saw it: a thin tear in the air itself, shimmering faintly like heat haze.
An exit.
Jonas sprinted, every step heavier, the world around him twisting. Shadows from the square's corners began racing toward him, whispering, "One… two… three…"
He dove.
The rooftop came back in a rush — wet air, real cold, the sound of distant traffic. Jonas slammed onto the gravel surface, coughing, lungs raw.
But the fog was still there, curling at the edges. Watching. Waiting.
And far below, the city bell rang again.