The morning began with a bird, a small grey thing with a seed in its beak, landing on the sill of Zipporah Gefen's mill. Zipporah, who had been up since before dawn to check the waterwheel, found it there when she opened the window to let in the air. The seed was dark brown, slightly larger than a pea, with a strange, waxy sheen. She had never seen anything like it. She held it in her palm, turned it over, and then looked out at the fog, which was thicker than usual, pressing against the town wall like a held breath. She did not know where the bird had come from, but she knew it had come from there, from the grey, and she felt a coldness in her chest that had nothing to do with the morning air.

By midday, the seed had made its way to Fernando's workshop, where he had set up a small table by the window to examine it under a lens. He did not speak much, only hummed as he turned the seed this way and that, noting its weight, its texture, its faint, almost floral smell. Liesl Kfir came by, wiping her hands on an oily rag, and stood over his shoulder. "It's not from here," she said. "Nothing in the gardens makes a seed like that." Fernando nodded. "It's from the other side," he said, and he did not mean the river. He wrote in his notebook, drawn a careful sketch, and then he put the seed in a small glass jar, sealed it, and placed it on the shelf where he kept the other oddities: a stone with a straight line carved through it, a strip of metal that did not rust, a dried leaf with a vein pattern that matched no known plant. He did not label the jar. He did not need to.

In the hall, Obed the baker had died in his sleep. He was eighty-five, and the healer said his heart had simply given out. They found him in his cot, his hands folded over his chest, a faint smile on his face, as if he had dreamed something pleasant. The whole town knew Obed—he had baked the morning loaves for sixty years, and even in these last months, when he could not stand for long, he had sat by the ovens and watched the bread rise. The women of the north quarter prepared his body, and the men dug a grave in the yard behind the hall, where the stones were soft enough to break. The funeral was short, and the mourners were quiet. Dalia Shalev stood at the back, her notebook in her hand, and wrote down the date and the time and the words the priest said, which were simple and did not mention the fog. Afterward, the town returned to its work, but the day felt heavier, as if the fog had pressed itself into the shoulders of everyone who walked.

In the evening, Rimon the younger was born. The mother's name was Dvora, and she was a weaver who lived near the square. The healer was the same one who had attended the births of Zev and Uriel the day before, and she was tired, but she did her work well. Rimon came out with a full head of black hair and a cry that filled the room. The mother held her, and the father, a quiet man who worked the fields, stood by the window and watched the fog until the healer told him to come and see his daughter. He did, and he smiled, and he said nothing about the fog. But that night, when the baby slept, she dreamed a sentence in a voice like her own. The words were not spoken, not even whispered—they were simply known, as if the walls had heard them and passed them on. The healer felt it first, that stillness, and she looked at the mother, who was asleep, and she said nothing. She pulled the blanket up over the baby's chin and left the lamp burning low by the door.

On the north path, the guard named Haim had sent Liora the younger home with wet boots and a reminder that the Council preferred people to mind their trade. She had been standing too close to the fog, he said, too close to the line where the grey began. She had not argued, only nodded, and walked back through the mud, her boots squelching. When she reached her porch, she did not go inside. She sat on the steps, pulled off her boots, and stared at the fog until the light failed. She was still there when the lamp in the window was lit, and the light fell across her face, and she looked at the grey and thought of the seed, of the baby's dream, of the way the fog had seemed to breathe that morning, as if it had been waiting for something. She did not know what it was waiting for. No one did. But in the town of Neshiyah, that night, no one slept easily, and the fog pressed against the walls, patient and vast, and the second sound came and went, and went, and went, and no one could say where it began or where it ended, only that it was there, and that the town was still standing, and that the morning would come, as it always did, and the fog would be there, just fog, and nothing more.