Vergania was a city that slept under a thick layer of fog for most of the year. Almost none of the inhabitants remembered anymore what the light of the morning looked like without this milky veil - except Irmina. The seventeen-year-old girl, raised by her botanist grandfather, had always felt that there was more than just moisture hidden in that mist. Her grandfather used to say that the mist "protects, but sometimes also tempts". One evening, when everyone was closing the shutters against the cold, Irmina set off through the still empty market instead of going home. She was carrying a rucksack full of sketches she had drawn over the years, trying to capture what she saw on the border between reality and dreams. Her dream was to become an artist, but recent dreams had her thinking that the future held something much bigger. She reached the old square, where the fog was thickest. There, under the silent clock, stood a boy she had never seen here before. He was dressed in black and held a strangely shiny stone in his hand. He looked at her intently, as if he was waiting for someone. - 'I've been waiting for you,' he said quietly, and from his voice she sensed a slight accent, unfamiliar in Vergania. Irmina felt everything around her slow down. The fog began to thicken, and the chairs and tables from the café in the market disappeared into its velvet folds. The stone in the boy's hand flashed blue, casting shadows on the cobbles. - Who are you? - she asked, sensing that the answer would change everything. The boy only smiled. - 'If you want to know the truth about this fog, you'll have to come with me. But that will mean you won't be coming home for a very long time. Irmina looked at her backpack, at her sketches and at the houses disappearing into the milky air. In that one moment, the decision seemed both the most difficult and the most obvious of her life. She reached out towards the boy, but before she could touch his hand, the mist surrounded them completely, and a deafening, unearthly sound rang out around them, as if someone had opened a door to another dimension....