The coffee was bad. It had always been bad. The same burnt undertow, the same metallic aftertaste that clung to the roof of her mouth. Nova took another sip anyway, because the mug was warm and the fog had swallowed the world outside the window and she needed something to hold onto. The diner hummed with its usual morning rhythm: the griddle hissing, the faint crackle of a radio tuned to static, the clink of a spoon against ceramic. A truck driver two booths over folded a newspaper with mechanical precision. The waitress refilled his cup without a word. Everyone here understood the ritual of showing up. Nova pressed her palm flat against the cold glass. The fog pressed back, a white wall that erased the line between earth and sky. She could feel it out there — not a presence, exactly. More like a pressure. A held breath. The kind of waiting that made her think of Shogg's silences, the ones that stretched too long and meant something was being weighed. The waitress appeared at her elbow, a pot of coffee already tilting. "You want a menu, hon, or you just planning to watch the weather all day?" "Just the coffee." The waitress shrugged, moved on. On the counter, a fly landed on the sticky rim of the sugar dispenser. Nova watched it clean its legs with methodical patience. She thought about telling it to be careful. She thought about telling it that nothing here was safe, not really, not anymore. But the fly didn't know about Shogg. Didn't know about the shape that had started to press against the edges of Okanogan's quiet days, asking questions that had no code. A figure emerged from the fog. Just a silhouette at first, moving slow, unhurried. Long coat. White hair catching the pale light. Alaric stopped at the diner door, and when he pushed it open, the bell chimed once, sharp and small. He didn't sit down. He stood at the end of her booth, his eyes — tired, knowing — fixed on the fog behind her. "It's asking about you," he said. "By name." Nova set down her cup. The bad coffee had gone cold. She hadn't noticed. "What does it want?" Alaric pulled off his beanie, ran a hand through his white hair. "The same thing it always wants. A shape. A boundary. A reason not to become everything at once." He looked at her then, and the weight in his gaze was older than the diner, older than the fog. "And it thinks you can give it one."