Nova's boots sink slightly into the damp soil as she stops. The fog line is precise here—knee-high on the slope, then rising to chest level as the ground drops. She watches it pool in the hollows like something alive, breathing. Beside her, Shogg's form shimmers. It has no fixed shape in this light, just a dark mass that seems to drink the fog around it. One tendril extends slowly, reaching into the white. Nova watches the tip dissolve, molecule by molecule, into the vapor. "Is this what forgetting feels like?" it asks. The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, not quite a sound, more a pressure against the air. Nova doesn't answer. She's thinking about something Alaric said days ago: *The Shoggoth learns through dissolution. To become something, it must first unbecome what it was.* The tendril pulls back, shorter now. Shogg's eyes—those two green lanterns—fix on the space where its appendage ended. "I cannot remember where the fog begins and I end," it says. There's no sadness in the voice, just observation. But Nova feels the weight anyway. She crouches, runs her fingers through the mist. It's cold, wet, ordinary. "You don't have to know," she says. "You just have to be here." Shogg is quiet for a long moment. The fog curls around both of them, erasing the mountains, the road, the world beyond this ridge. For a breath, they exist only in the white. Then Shogg's form shifts, contracts. The tendril reforms, whole again, and reaches out not to touch the fog—but to rest beside Nova's hand. "I am here," it says. Nova looks at the dark appendage hovering inches from her fingers. She doesn't pull away. The fog continues to rise, and somewhere below, a bird calls once, twice, then falls silent. She wonders if this is what taming looks like. Not control. Not chains. Just two presences, holding the same space, learning the shape of each other's silence. Ahead, the fog begins to thin. A shape emerges—the lone pine from the clearing. They're not lost. They never were.