The world is a blur of grey mist and my own feet. I keep catching my boot on loose cobbles I would normally see. The mist clings to everything, a cold, wet shroud that erases the path a few paces ahead.

  A woman freezes, tipping a bucket to catch the drip from a mossy roof. A man mending a fence stops hammering, his arm locked in mid-swing. Their eyes find me, then skitter away.

  The tavern rises out of the mist, a darker shape in the grey. Derrick stands in the doorway, his massive frame a block of shadow. His eyes catch mine across the mist, already hunting for a crack in my composure. With a brief jerk of his head, he beckons me inside.

  The tavern's usual warmth feels cloying as Derrick slams the shutters closed. The door swings shut, and the bright rectangle of daylight on the floor is instantly erased.

  "We need to talk," Derrick says, locking the door. "About the selection."

  I swallow. My tongue feels thick, useless. "I heard them."

  Derrick's only answer is to yank open the cellar door. "Not here," he mutters, before turning his back and descending into the darkness.

  I hesitate at the top of the stairs.

  Why the cellar? What can't be said in a locked, empty room?

  I follow him down. The darkness swallows the light from the tavern above, and the door clicks shut behind me.

  "Listen carefully," Derrick begins, his voice a low rumble in the tight space. "What I'm about to tell you is the only thing that can save your life."

  Derrick leans in so close I can feel his breath hot against my ear. His hand grips my shoulder, its heat a surprising, living thing through the fabric of my tunic. I feel a tremor run through his fingers.

  "The Resistance," he says.

  He stops, the words dissolving in the dead air.

  "It's dying."

  His voice cracks. "And you're the first sign of hope we've had in a year."

  He pulls back, his eyes searching mine.

  "We can protect you," he continues, the words quieter now. "We have ways to get you out of here. Somewhere the Collectors will never find you."

  "But this protection," Derrick continues, his voice acquiring an edge, "demands loyalty. Commitment."

  I stand frozen. The promise of safety is a warm light in a cold, dark room. But an instinct, older than Alistair, older than any skin I can recall, tells me that light is bait.

  Derrick's hand clamps onto my arm. His grip is weak, a flash of pain crossing his face before he buries it. "There is a threat to this village. A mouth that won't stay shut." He pulls me closer, his voice a low rasp right against my ear. "You know what happens to a flock when one sheep learns to cry wolf? The real wolves come. And they don't stop at one."

  The cellar seems to shrink, the shadows pressing in.

  "They must be eliminated."

  Derrick's eyes hold mine, weighing my silence. "One quick, necessary cut now prevents a massacre later."

  His fingers dig into my arm like a drowning man clutching at a raft. "They won't just take the one who spoke. They'll take everyone who listened. Everyone who could have heard."

  His voice cracks on the last word. "That's how they work."

  "Decide by tonight. Meet me here after closing if you accept."

  He releases me, taking a half-step back.

  The tavern door clicks shut at my back. Greyhollow stretches out before me, the same yet changed.

  Every face I pass is now a question. A waiting target.

  I see the baker, his hands dusted with the flour that feeds the village. The blacksmith, his hammer shaping the tools that build it. An old woman in her garden, planting seeds for a spring she may not see.

  Which of these lives must be put out?

  A group of children kicking a tattered ball fall silent as I pass.

  "That's him," one says, stopping the ball with his foot. "The one they chose."

  "Shh!" another hisses, pulling at the first one's sleeve. "Don't look. Mama says it's bad luck."

  Their words should hurt. Instead, they just confirm what I already know. I am a walking corpse here. It almost makes Derrick's offer feel like an anchor, however rotten.

  Yet, when I picture the act, the hand that knows how to kill goes dead. The bones inside feel like packed sand.

  He came here to fight monsters, not to become one for a man in a cellar.

  The sun bleeds out across the horizon, staining the underside of the clouds the colour of freshly butchered meat.

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  I stand outside the Broken Barrel. My hand hovers over the handle of the door. I take a breath and push it open.

  The tavern is empty save for Derrick. He looks up from wiping a clean patch of the bar.

  "I'll do it."

  Derrick gives a weary nod. He gestures with his chin towards the cellar door. Once again, we descend into the damp darkness.

  "The target," Derrick says, his voice low, "is an old alchemist."

  He hesitates, the name a stone in his throat.

  "Nora."

  An old woman? This is the threat that has Derrick trembling?

  "Her cottage is at the edge of the village," he continues, "the one that leans like a drunkard against the forest. The windows glow at all hours. And the smells are wrong. Unnatural."

  What secrets could an old alchemist uncover that would justify her murder? Something doesn't feel right.

  I give a slow nod, keeping my face neutral. "I'll handle it tonight."

  For the first time, the rigid line of Derrick's shoulders softens. The muscles in his thick neck unlock, and he lets out a breath he seems to have been holding for years.

  He grips my shoulder, his hand still hot. "Once it's done, you are one of us. Protected." His mouth curves downward at the edges. "Make it look like an accident. No traces. We can't afford suspicion."

  As I turn to leave, his hand shoots out, grabbing my arm with a force that makes me flinch. "Remember, this is for the good of the whole. Sometimes, a few rotten branches must be cut to save the tree."

  I look down at his hand on my arm. The veins on the back of his hand stand out like cords. He's trying to convince himself as much as me.

  Just how many of those 'few' are already buried beneath Greyhollow?

  I pull free of his grip and turn toward the stairs.

  As the cellar door closes, a sound catches me, a low groan of pain. But the sound is wrong. It doesn't have the clean edge of physical pain.

  It's ragged, wet.

  A sob.

  I do not linger. I leave him to his grief.

  The cool night air does little to clear my head as I emerge from the tavern. Each step towards Nora's cottage is a step into deeper water.

  Her cottage emerges from the murk. The faint, warm light from its windows seems less like a welcome and more like a warning.

  My fist trembles as I raise it to the door. My three raps on the wood detonate in the quiet street.

  Who is this woman? What could she have possibly discovered? And what will I do when she opens the door?

  The door creaks open. An old woman stands in the doorway, a shawl draped over her thin shoulders. Her face is a map of wrinkles, but her eyes are sharp and clear. They widen for a heartbeat before she schools her features into a polite blankness.

  "Alistair," she says, her voice steady. "The one chosen." Her eyes sweep the street behind me. "Come in. You look frozen to the bone."

  I cross the threshold. The warmth from her hearth wraps around me.

  "Sit," Nora says, gesturing to a worn armchair by the fire before moving towards a cluttered kitchen. "I'll put the kettle on."

  I sink into the worn armchair, its comfort a stark contrast to the cold purpose that brought me here.

  As she moves about the kitchen, my eyes drift to the walls. Paintings hang everywhere, capturing moments in time. Then my breath catches. In a small, framed painting near the mantelpiece, I see them. Evangeline and Pip. They are standing with a red-haired man, his arm around Evangeline's shoulders. All three are laughing. In the corner of the painting, another face smiles, her pride unmistakable. Nora.

  They are her family.

  I listen for any other sound in the cottage. A sleeping breath, a shifting floorboard upstairs. The house is silent save for the crackle of the fire and the kettle's rising, insistent shriek.

  Nora returns with two steaming mugs. She hands one to me before settling into the armchair opposite. "Now then," she says, her sharp eyes meeting mine over the rim of her mug. "What brings the village's sacrifice to my door on a night like this?"

  "There is something you need to know," I manage. The words are quiet, but they feel heavy as stones in the small room.

  She leans forward. "Go on. Whatever it is, it's a poison you need to spit out."

  I take a breath. "You are in danger, Nora. Derrick sent me here. He wants you silenced."

  The warmth leaves Nora's face. Her hand goes to the hollow of her throat. "Derrick? But I thought he was one of ours." She shakes her head, a slow, disbelieving motion. "It makes no sense."

  She stops. "Unless."

  She looks away from me, her eyes settling on the fire. For a long moment, she just watches the flames consume the wood, her expression lost in the shifting light.

  I lean forward. "Unless what?"

  "Unless I found something I was never meant to see." She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. "Oh, you foolish, foolish old woman."

  "What did you find, Nora? What is it?"

  "I was a fool," she says, her voice thin. "I looked where I shouldn't have. And I found a secret."

  Her hand finds mine on the table, her skin as dry and cool as paper. "Collectors, they're not what we think they are. They're not just taking people for labour."

  The hairs on my arms lift, each one a tiny needle of alarm. "What do you mean?"

  With a trembling hand, Nora reaches to a nearby shelf and pulls down a heavy, leather-bound book. "I wanted to learn more. To find remedies that didn't rely on prayer or luck. I found old books. Forbidden books."

  She opens the book on her lap, her fingers tracing the brittle, yellowed pages with a strange mix of reverence and revulsion. "I saw things in that book. Strange recipes. Formulae from the bowels of Morvain."

  "And the Collectors," she breathes, the words barely escaping, "I believe they are using them on our people. The ones chosen for the Flesh Tax."

  She reaches for her mug of tea, but her hand stops halfway, hovering over the table. It crawls back to her lap without ever touching the mug. Her throat works for a moment, as if the words themselves are a physical obstruction.

  "The texts describe a process. A remaking." Her expression is distant, unfocused, as if she is watching the process unfold behind her own eyes. "It renders them down and rebuilds them into something new. Something alien."

  She pushes the open book across the small table towards me. I look at the sketches. A man's arm ends not in a hand, but a weeping, fleshy root. A woman's spine bends backward until her head touches her heels. Her mouth is a gaping O of black ink. They are drawings of nightmares.

  I flip a page. Then another. I see flesh, rendered down to a grey slurry, sloughing from the bone. Another sketch shows a human jaw, unhinged past the point of breaking, its teeth pushed violently from their empty sockets.

  My hands shake around the warm mug. I set it down on the small table between us before it slips from my grip.

  I thought I was unique. An anomaly.

  But that book. That book is full of anomalies. Things that should not be. And I am one of them.

  My own strangeness has always felt like a violation of nature. A curse. But this page suggests it is a science. A craft. An art form.

  I am a creation.

  A weapon.

  My entire existence has been nothing more than the result of Collectors' twisted experiments. Was I a success they lost, or a failure they discarded?

  The search for who I was takes on a new, sickening dimension. Was Eli from Blackthorn someone they took and strapped to an alchemist's table?

  "If this is true," I start to say, my voice as unsteady as my hands.

  "It has to be. Why else would Derrick send a man to kill me?" Her eyes jump towards her own front door.

  I glance from the book to her terrified face. "But why? Why would Derrick protect this?"

  Nora gives a short, sharp laugh. "To protect everyone from the truth? To protect himself? Or maybe," she says, her voice becoming thin, "maybe he is one of them."

  She clutches the book to her chest. "You must be careful, Alistair. My curiosity may have just signed your death warrant as well as my own."

  "I'll be careful," I say.

  She walks me to the door, her hand trembling on the latch. "Watch who you trust, Alistair. A man willing to kill a neighbour to keep a secret," she says, her voice cold, "is a man who will do anything."

  I nod once, unable to offer any words of comfort, and step out into the night.

  Ahead, through the grime of the tavern window, I spot a hulking silhouette.

  Derrick is waiting.