Book Two — The Shadow of DeepFall People are disappearing in DeepFall. Not dying. Not running. Vanishing. When Marla Hensley disappears on an ordinary street, she leaves behind groceries, keys, a purse, and a shadow that should not remain after the person casting it is gone. The town’s wrongness is no longer confined to the woods. It has moved into roads, homes, alleys, storefronts, and the spaces between one step and the next. Rowan arrives in DeepFall by a bus route that should not exist, delivered to a town that feels less like a destination than a decision made without him. He meets Elias, Mara, and Ash, people who understand that DeepFall does not merely hide danger. It rearranges it. Space bends. Streets lengthen. Houses stop obeying their own rooms. And something in the town begins pulling Rowan toward the center of a pattern he does not understand. As federal investigator Ken Mercer locks down the streets and the disappearances worsen, Rowan learns that DeepFall is not haunted in any ordinary sense. It is structured. And now the structure is starting to move.