C152 NO PLACE FOR FALTERING

Ashenreach changed after midnight.

The music didn’t stop, but it shifted. Laughter thinned. Doors closed more often than they opened. Lanterns were lowered, not extinguished, as if the city wanted to see without being seen.

Elara felt it the moment she and Damon went deeper into the lower quarter.

“This place knows trouble is coming,” she said.

Damon gazed at the rooftops. “It always does