In Lin, the fog did not just roll in from the river, it lived in the streets. It slid through doorways, seeped into alleyways, and swallowed the lamps until they glowed like drowning fireflies. The people learned to move quickly and keep to the beaten paths, for Lin’s fog was said to hide more than damp air. Myths haunted every corner of the city, passed in murmurs at tea stalls and whispered over cracked cups of rice wine. There was the Wailing Bride who knocked at windows during storms. The Painted Child who left crimson handprints on your door. And then there was the Lantern Keeper.
No one claimed to have seen his face. Some said he had none at all. He was only a shadow—tall, thin, silent—carrying a lantern whose flame burned too bright to look at directly. It was not a guiding light, they said. It was a light that judged. Step into it, and the lantern would lay you bare. All your secrets would spill from you like blood from a wound. And once the Lantern Keeper had seen you, you never forgot.
Ryn had grown up with such tales, and he laughed at them the way one laughed at an old drunk who claimed to wrestle tigers. Lin’s streets had enough real dangers: gangs who cut your purse and your throat in the same motion, guards who turned a blind eye for silver, the slow hunger that could hollow your ribs. Ghost stories were for children and cowards. At fifteen, Ryn was neither. He was quick with his hands and quicker with his feet. By the time he was twelve, he could lift a coin purse without the owner even noticing until he was half a street away. By fifteen, he had a reputation in the Old District—not one that earned respect, but one that made him useful to certain people who liked to pay for quiet work.
That night, the air in Lin was colder than usual, and the fog had rolled in thick as wool. Ryn had just lifted a ring from a merchant’s finger. A fat silver thing with a ruby set in its center, worth enough to keep him in hot meals for a month when trouble found him. A gang of older boys, the kind who hunted in packs, spotted him slipping away. He knew their type. They’d take the ring, the coins in his pocket, maybe even the coat on his back. If they were feeling cruel, they’d leave him with a limp to remind him whose streets these were.
He didn’t plan to give them the chance.
Ryn darted into the nearest alley, boots striking wet cobblestones. The fog made the world smaller; the walls on either side loomed, dripping with moisture. Behind him, the gang’s shouts echoed, muffled but too close.
He turned sharply into a narrower passage, then another, trusting the twisting paths of the Old District to hide him. The air smelled of rust and rotting vegetables, the kind of alley no one lingered in. That was when he saw it. A glow in the fog. It wasn’t the weak yellow of Lin’s streetlamps or the red of a lantern outside a teahouse. This light was sharper—blue, cold, almost metallic. It cut through the mist in a narrow beam, and the fog seemed to curl away from it. Ryn froze. The light grew brighter, and then he saw it: a lantern, hanging in the air as if an invisible hand held it. The flame inside was not a flame at all but something denser, like molten glass.
Behind it stood a figure. Tall. Thin. A silhouette darker than the night around it. The edges of its body seemed to fray into the mist, like it wasn’t entirely there. Ryn strained to see a face, but there was nothing—only the outline of a head, featureless and still.
“Thief.”
The word didn’t come from the alley. It didn’t pass through the air at all. It bloomed inside Ryn’s skull, heavy and cold. The lantern’s blue light swelled. In its glow, the fog fell away. And Ryn saw—not the alley, not the gang that might still be chasing him—but himself. He saw every coin he had ever lifted, every ring, every scrap of bread taken from a market stall. He saw the lies he had told to keep from being beaten, the faces of those he’d cheated or left behind. He saw himself laughing when someone else’s luck turned sour because of him. Each memory cut like a blade. His chest felt tight, his stomach churning.
“Please…”
The word slipped out of him before he could stop it. His knees buckled under the weight of the images. The flame burned hotter, shifting from blue to a fierce white. New images spilled from its light—ones he didn’t recognize. A street corner. A hand gripping his wrist. A voice shouting. A flash of steel in the dark. His own hand, pinned to a wall, blood blooming between his fingers. A blade falling toward his face. A future.
“No”
Ryn scrambled back, his palms scraping against wet stone. The lantern swayed, following him, the light never leaving his skin. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the figure stopped. Ryn turned and ran. He didn’t care where he went—he just needed to get away from that light. His boots pounded on the stones, the cold air burning his lungs. The alley twisted, the fog thickened, and he tripped over something unseen. He hit the ground hard, rolling onto his side. When he looked up, the lantern was gone. Only the familiar yellow glow of a streetlamp met his eyes, its light diffused by the fog. The alley was empty. Silent. Ryn lay there for a moment, breathing hard, his hands trembling. Then he pushed himself to his feet and walked home without looking back.
The next morning, he found himself staring at the stolen ring in his palm. The ruby caught the pale light from his window, gleaming like an eye. His stomach turned. Before noon, he returned to the merchant’s shop. The man barely noticed the ring’s reappearance—his wife accepted it with a puzzled frown, muttering something about finding it on the floor. Ryn didn’t explain.
In the days that followed, he moved differently. He stuck to the main streets. He avoided the Old District’s narrowest alleys. And when the fog thickened, he stayed indoors. He never saw the Lantern Keeper again. Some in Lin swore the Keeper punished those he found, that no one could walk away unchanged. Others claimed he was a warning—a chance to turn aside from a path before it ended in ruin. Ryn didn’t care which was true. All he knew was that he would never forget the weight of that blue light, or the voice that had spoken inside his head like a verdict.
And on nights when the fog pressed against the windows, he checked every corner of the room for even the faintest flicker of blue.
