Reaver presses his palm against the cypress bark and counts the shadows gathering in the fog. Twelve figures tonight. Eighteen last night. The numbers keep growing, which means his hands keep shaking. He needs a stage if he wants to master the tragic tales—something permanent, something that lets him slip away without the audience noticing he's gone. He walks the misty path between the twisted trees, searching for something the swamp might give him. A platform. A frame. Anything to hold his lantern and his shapes. The fog-drawn audience won't wait forever in the cypress bend without a place to sit, without a reason to believe he'll return. His feet carry him to a worn dock where someone left a leather pouch of marbles and a collection of mossy rocks arranged like seats. The swamp has already started building for him. He kneels and begins stacking the rocks into a low wall, then lays planks across the cypress roots to form a stage. By dawn, he has a structure. Small, crooked, but his. The audience will come back now, and he'll have somewhere to disappear from. But when he tests the stage at dusk, standing where his lantern will hang, he sees what he's built. The balcony of the treehouse above gives him height. The railings frame the fog perfectly. The shadows of the cypress roots stretch across the performance space like reaching fingers. It's beautiful. It's exactly what tragedy needs. And it's trap—because now the audience knows where to find him, night after night, until he learns to stay. He opens the dark satchel and pulls out his first puppet. A figure bent under invisible weight. He hangs the lantern and begins, letting the light cast the shape across the white fog. The audience settles on the path below, silent and still. His hands steady as the story takes form. When the tale ends, he does not slip away. He stands on the balcony and watches them watch his shadow. His feet want to move, but he keeps them planted. One performance. Then another. Then another. The cypress bend has given him a place, and he has given it his word to return.