No one ever truly settled on a definition, and in the end that ambiguity may have been the last honest way to speak about it. Specialists pointed to data models and projections, confident that order could still be found, while everyone else learned to rely on subtler signs—the charged stillness before another collapse, the sudden emptiness of wires once crowded with birds.

Old debates over responsibility and faith shrank with each passing day, overwhelmed by the immediate need to survive another evening without the power cutting out.

And yet, in that pared-back reality, something deeply human began to grow. Neighbors who had once passed each other in silence now exchanged power strips and murmured comfort in pitch-black staircases. With no explanations to lean on, people showed up instead: arms linked on darkened streets, meals improvised over portable burners, stories swapped as if they were sustenance. Whatever the fog was, whatever its purpose, it revealed a quiet, resilient fact—when everything else fell away, they still had each other.