Every river in The Dark Peak flows eventually to the Ripperthroat mountains — the Dun, the Loxley, the Rivelin, all three tails of dunlockslyn, converging at the one place from which, according to both custom and theology, no resident of Hellsborough ever returns. Van has been there. He mentions it with the particular casualness he reserves for things he ought not to have survived.

During murkrise, the psycmask reveals two timelines simultaneously — the current civic framework overlaid on older designations that predate the council by generations: buildings labelled *held in common, unenclosed, no individual claim*, the notation dissolving before seven. Tom noted this on his twenty-eighth day in Hellsborough; he also noted a figure at forty metres, person-shaped, that produced no amber outline, no attention profile, no entry in the system at all.

Hellsborough has no plaster casts. When I broke my arm in the Wisewood — the mat of leaves beneath me simply slid back, clean as marble, bringing me down hard enough to snap the humerus in two — my landlady fitted a sling and dosed me with something she called crustins-me-ducktee. Combining it with several beers produces dreams that remain vivid several weeks later.

Between Wadsley Common and Beacon Wood there is a bunker from the former industrial era — the kind described as derelict that is better described as occupied by other means. An ash tree has grown through the structure, the artwork on the walls is still visible, and wires thread through the surrounding trees in a pattern almost impossible to distinguish from the branches. Van, on hearing this, said only: Moldenke, no doubt.