Set along the far western part of Hades' Beach. [372 words].

There was a perceptible chill in the air that morning that was almost palpitable through the thick fog that came rolling off of the sandy shores of the beach. Corona was up again at Andrezej’s grave, though she now came there out of habit rather than to ponder as to what had made him so different from all of them. She had wasted enough time trying to figure out what had made her half-brother despise them so, what had driven him to attack his niece, but she had never came to any conclusions. Rachias had been the one to mark the grave, and that stone hadn’t moved very much in the months that it had been left there.

She had given it a brief glance when she had been fully aware of her surroundings, but the gold-haired Lykoi had mostly moved on from there in a matter of moments. She was out further than usual, clinging loosely to the western border of Inferni with no real purpose other than to see if anything at all had washed up on shore. Corona had gotten pretty good at finding mussels here and there, but as the weather turned colder, the deeper down they went, and the less chance she had of finding them during low tide. As she went along for a moment more, her steps began to slow into a stop. Sighing, her eyes focused out on the hazy, foggy horizon where sea met land briefly, and adjusted the knapsack that was slung haphazardly over her shoulder.

It was annoying purely because it was empty — her mussel hunting that morning had only turned up one, whose damp and gritty clam-like shell was still held in her hand, not more than fifteen minutes fresh from the shore. It was tempting, she decided, to throw it back to the sea. One wasn’t entirely enough to sate any hunger that would eventually rumble up, but one was one more than she would have later. But the hybrid apothecary made no move to act on saving or throwing away. Instead she simply stood there, seemingly lost in thought or at least appearing like some distant sentry scouting on the shore ahead.