The swamp had no right to be this quiet.
The Drowns were never silent—normally a mess of bubbling methane, distant industrial grinding, and the wet slap of things that shouldn’t exist, sliding through the dark.
Now, as the yellow fog thickened around the Opera House, the whole world seemed to hold its breath.
Even the mosquitoes gave up. The usual whining cloud simply dropped out of the air, tiny bodies dusting the black water like rancid snow.
Fifty yards from the Prism Generator’s shimmering, glitching dome, seven figures stood ankle-deep in sludge.
Crimson velvet robes dragged through the filth, soaking up the muck. None of them so much as flinched. Hoods swallowed their faces, leaving only impressions beneath the cloth—a faint glow where eyes should be, a hollow where a mouth migh
