A piece from the Low Tide Ledger files

Fog rolled in thick from the estuary, so dense it brushed the windows of the Blackwater Inn like a living thing testing the glass. The lamps inside shone through it in a damp, coppery haze, giving the whole place the look of something half-submerged.

Dietrich Sloane stood outside the door for a long moment before entering. He had the posture of a man returning to a memory he did not trust.

Mae was behind the bar, wiping down the counter. She didn’t look surprised to see him.

“You’re late,” she said.

“I took the long way,” Dietrich answered — though the long way in Blackwater rarely meant anything good.

A pair of men in work boots were hunched in the corner booth. They weren’t locals. Dietrich saw that immediately. They looked up a beat too slow when he entered, then a beat too long when he passed. The kind of lingering stare that wasn’t curiosity.

Mae followed his gaze. “If they’re trouble—”

“They’re not here for me,” Dietrich said.

But Mae could tell: he was lying, or worse, he didn’t know.

He walked to the far window — the cracked one no regular went near. The fog on the other side seethed like it was breathing.

His reflection was there, but muted, as though it existed a fraction of a second late.

Mae lowered her voice. “Don’t stand at that one.”

He didn’t step back. He leaned a little closer to the glass, eyes narrowing at something only he seemed to notice — a shape, or an outline, or a movement he refused to describe.

Behind him, the two men rose.

Mae stiffened. “Dietrich…”

He didn’t turn, but he spoke.

“If those two walked all the way here to collect me, they’re wasting their time.” A pause. “And they must know it.”

The heaviness in the air changed. Not fear. Something else. Anticipation.

The men fanned out — one blocking the door, the other taking a slow step toward him. They were expecting two possible reactions: Dietrich running, or Dietrich fighting. That was the mistake everyone made around him.

Dietrich finally looked over his shoulder.

“You think I only have two choices,” he said quietly. “I don’t.”

He lifted his hand and placed his palm flat against the glass.

The fog convulsed. A second hand — pale, long-fingered, more suggestion than flesh — pressed from the outside in perfect symmetry.

Mae’s breath caught. The men stopped mid-step.

Dietrich’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “You came here for me. I wouldn’t choose either of your paths.”

A thin crack traced down the window, deliberate as handwriting.

The fog-hand pushed harder.

And Dietrich — impossibly, disturbingly calm — smiled without warmth.

“So choose your own,” he said.

There was no threat, no raised voice. Just the quiet implication that staying in the room with whatever was trying to get in was far more dangerous than anything they had planned.

The men backed away first. Then faster. Then left, slamming the door behind them.

The fog-hand dissolved. The crack on the glass stayed.

Dietrich lowered his own hand at last.

Mae didn’t speak for a long moment. Then: “What did you just do?”

He looked back at the window, as though trying to see whether the presence behind it was still there.

“I gave them a third option,” he said. “They couldn’t handle the first two.”