The fog lay thick along the Thames, clinging to the ironwork and swallowing sound. Even the city seemed hesitant to breathe.

Inspector Abberline paused beneath a flickering gaslamp, one hand resting on the grip of his pistol. The report had been vague—missing persons, disturbed ground, something seen moving where nothing should. The sort of thing that drew the attention of the Queen’s Court… and the sort of thing that usually proved worse than expected.

“You’re late.”

The voice came from behind him.

Abberline didn’t turn. “I prefer to arrive after the danger has made itself obvious.”

A soft, humorless chuckle answered him. Then silence again.

When he finally looked, the alley behind him was empty.

The ground, however, was not...

The cobblestones had shifted—just enough to notice if you knew where to look. A faint seam ran between them, dark and wet, as though something beneath had pressed upward…and then settled.

Abberline stepped back.

The street erupted.

Hands—grey, broken, and impossibly strong—burst through the stone, clawing for purchase. One body dragged itself free, then another, their movements wrong, unfinished. Eyes clouded. Limbs twisted. Dead men, dragged back into motion by something that had no right to command them.

Abberline fired once. Twice. The shots echoed uselessly into the fog.

“Not yours to stop,” came the voice again.

This time, it stood beside him.

Tall. Thin. Still as the grave.

Sowerberry regarded the rising dead with quiet interest, as though watching a familiar process unfold. No surprise. No alarm.

Only recognition.

“You knew,” Abberline said.

“I suspected,” the undertaker replied.

Another corpse pulled itself free, jaw hanging loose, fingers scraping against the stone as it turned toward them.

Abberline raised his pistol again. “And you intend to do nothing?”

Sowerberry tilted his head slightly.

“They are not the problem.”

The ground shifted once more—deeper this time. Slower. Something larger moving beneath the street, displacing the dead as it came.

For the first time, Abberline hesitated.

The fog thickened.

The dead turned.

And somewhere below them, something began to rise.