Squall-longleg brought three murk advisories from the Nascenti Environmental Office — the third upgraded to a formal warning before all three were quietly retracted without explanation, filed under Atmospheric Conditions: Pending Review. Something has not gone wrong with your eyes. I mention this only because that is exactly what someone would say if something had.

Visibility in Hellsborough tops out at ten paces on a clear day, which is not as clear as it sounds. The murk is oily, clinging, cold-damp — the sort of fog that outlasts any reasonable weather event and sticks to your coat for the rest of the week. It is not entirely natural: the nascenti-built humidity plants across the Dark Peak are maintenance infrastructure, keeping it dense for the benefit of xin, Exacids, clowns, and half a dozen other denizen races who depend on it. The Syncarids and Morivarids swimming through it are not a rumour. They are simply hard to see, which, from their perspective, is the entire arrangement.

Murk density peaks at 3am, when even reliable compasses point inward.