Chapter 7 The Final Territory

• He arrived in the small town three days later, having spent the interim watching the storm break and pass without incident, chalking its strangeness up to nothing more than ordinary weather he had simply failed to account for. Still, the unease it left behind lingered, a splinter he couldn't quite work free.
• The town itself was smaller than most of the places he'd hidden in during earlier loops, tucked into a valley far enough from any major road that outsiders rarely wandered through by accident.
• Quiet streets. A single general store, a diner with fogged windows, a scattering of houses with gardens gone slightly wild in the way gardens do when their owners are too busy living to fuss over them.