He couldn't remember a single face, yet he received a photograph of his mother standing in the fog twenty years ago. His mother had already “vanished” twenty-one years earlier.
Before the Winter Solstice, detective Shen Mo arrived in Wuyin Town. Seven names were carved into the village archway, and an eighth mark was taking shape, the writing as fresh as yesterday. There were no bodies here, only “people who haven't come back yet.” The night watchmen entered the fog every twenty years and never returned. The fog could mimic people you knew, learn your heartbeat, and make you see dead relatives in your tea.
Shen Mo discovered that his mother had once been a visitor, and that he was the offering the fog had been waiting for. On the night of the Winter Solstice, he had to choose: become a night watchman and be lost forever, erase all his memories in exchange for a “normal” life, or take up the fog's power and continue the lie.
But first, he had to make sure the person who emerged from the fog was still himself...
