Redfall City did not quiet itself for departures.
It never had.
The northern district remained restless beneath a pale afternoon sky, lanterns still burning along the narrow streets as if night had never fully left.
Their dim glow bled into the shifting shadows cast by uneven rooftops, painting the ground in fractured light.
Voices overlapped without rhythm—merchants shouting prices, customers arguing them down, iron striking iron somewhere deeper in the alleyways where a blacksmith worked without pause.
Nothing slowed.
Nothing made space.
Redfall did not bend for movement.
It absorbed it.
Liu Tong stepped out of the inn.
His boots met the worn stone of the street with a quiet, grounded sound that didn't carry—yet the effect spread anyway.
A man hauling crates shifted his path half a step to the side without looking up.
Two cultivators mid-argument lowered their voices instinctively.
