The fog was thick and damp, as if night itself had breathed it onto the cobblestones of Paris. It hid the sharp spires of cathedrals and the rotten smell of the Seine, swallowed sounds - both the anxious cries from the outskirts, where the last embers of rebellion still smoldered, and the distant tolling of the hour. In this silent, enveloping world, a single figure moved.

Olrox walked unhurriedly. Droplets of moisture glistened in his black hair and on the sharp tips of his ears. Mizrak. His Mizrak. He was no longer dying, yet he did not live. He existed in a new, alien state, and all his fury, all his righteous indignation, were directed at the one who had gifted him this pseudo-life. Olrox understood that fury. He respected it. But it did not make it any easier. In his chest, where an ancient, cold heart beat, gaped a wound that even his centuries of experience with loss could not heal. He had saved a man from death, but perhaps had forever lost his soul.

He turned into a narrow alley where the fog was especially dense, and the shadows from the overhanging half-timbered houses merged into solid blackness. His steps, silent to the human ear, echoed in his own mind like dull blows. He was a predator wandering in its cage, a sage who did not know the answer to the only important question. The story of his love interest's conversion repeats itself, and he thinks about it so much that he involuntarily weakens in the face of any danger that would meet him here.