He was in the eastern district before the city was awake.
Not waiting. Working.
The deep road structure that Mira had heard for the first time two nights ago was legible now through Extended Hunter's Instinct in a way it had not been before the Rift's field surge. The path-layer beneath the eastern district had a texture he had not previously been able to distinguish from the general density of the Rift's ambient field. Now he could read it separately. Below the city's construction layer, below the Guild's road network, below anything with a founding date—a pattern. Not static. Arranged. Built in stages over a period he could not measure, each stage interlocking with the others in the way load-bearing structures interlocked.
He stood on an eastern district street at dawn and read it the way he had learned to read zone territory maps. By being in it. By letting it come.
