Morning in the room smelled of tanning chemicals and old wood. The air sat heavy, thick with the sharp bite of treated hides and the dry dust that never quite left the floorboards.
Eli woke first. She checked the alley window by habit, then the door. Nothing moved below except the early apprentices hauling hides toward the main yard.
Their boots scuffed the packed dirt in steady, tired rhythms. Lara was already dressed, blade within reach on the edge of the mattress, watching Atlas the way she watched anything that carried the fire.
Clara sat on the edge of the bed with the ledger open to a fresh page, mapping the routes she had reconstructed from memory during the night. Her pen moved in short, precise strokes.
Atlas stood at the window longer than necessary. The towers looked different in daylight—less mythic, more administrative. Some still carried the scars of old demigod work, blackened stone and melted wards that no one had bothered to fully erase.
