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The rest of the day was quiet and nothing happened worth mentioning. The next day… Morning did not arrive gently in Slik City. It arrived like a coin dropped on stone.
The city woke in layers, first the labor routes and street vendors, then the guards and clerks, then the merchants and noble houses, and finally the predators who only moved when crowds formed thick enough to hide them.
Slik was a trade city in the lower domain, but it never truly belonged to mortals. It belonged to whoever could control flow, because in Null, flow was power. Flow of stones. Flow of artifacts. Flow of rumor. Flow of fear.
Today, all of that flow ran toward one place. It was Dawn House.
The auction building and the shop were the same structure, wide and old, built like a respectable merchant hall from the outside and like a small fortress inside. Its public entrance had polished stairs and decorative pillars, but the stone beneath those decorations was layered with practical reinforcement.
