The shop's front boards tore away as if pulled by unseen hands. Splinters clattered across the floor. The fog spilled in, thick as smoke, and the shape beyond loomed closer with each slow step.
Marla didn't hesitate. She grabbed Adrian's wrist and hauled him toward the back door. "Move!"
Greaves stumbled after them, panting, his eyes wide with the vacant panic of prey. The thing's song followed, threading through the cracks in the walls, wrapping around Adrian's mind like cold hands.
Adrian… stay…
He bit down on his own tongue hard enough to taste blood, forcing his focus on the door ahead. Marla slammed it open, and the three of them burst into an alley choked with mist. The world felt muted, the only real sound their hurried footfalls and the faint, relentless melody behind them.
"This way," Marla hissed, taking a sharp turn between two crumbling brick buildings.
The fog thickened until Adrian could barely see the ground beneath his feet. His heart thundered. Behind them, the sound of the thing's movements was wrong — not footsteps, but a wet, dragging glide that made his stomach turn.
They reached a tall, weathered building with a blackened door. Its frame was etched with strange, looping symbols.
"Inside!" Marla shoved Greaves through first, then Adrian. She followed and slammed the door behind them, sliding an iron bar into place. The moment it locked, the song… stopped.
Adrian blinked. The silence was absolute — thick, almost physical.
"What is this place?" he asked, voice shaking.
Marla stepped past him, lighting an oil lamp from a shelf. The faint glow revealed a long hall lined with shelves of dust-choked books, strange charms dangling from the ceiling, and a single set of stairs leading down into darkness.
"It's the last door," she said. "The only place in the Harbor it can't pass."
Greaves sank to the floor, sobbing in quiet relief. "Then we're safe?"
"No," Marla said flatly. She looked at Adrian, her eyes shadowed. "Safe from that one, yes. But the fog doesn't have just one voice."
A sound rose in the distance — not the same song as before. This one was higher, sharper, like glass singing in the wind.
And it was coming from inside the building.