The first Prism Shift of the morning nearly put Riven through a wall.
He came out of the movement sideways, shoulder striking plaster hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling. Pain shot down his arm. He caught his balance two steps later and stood in the middle of the room breathing through clenched teeth.
The apartment seemed offended by his presence.
The chair had been pushed against the bed to make space. The table sat crooked near the window. His wash basin rocked from where he had clipped it during the landing. For a room that charged rent, it showed very little loyalty.
Riven rolled his shoulder once and looked inward.
Prism Shift rested in one of his five slots with the same dense pressure it had carried since the Glass Corridor. It never thrashed or slipped out of control. The problem was simpler than that. His body had not adapted to channeling something of that grade yet. Every activation strained nerves, balance, and focus in ways Shadow Veil and Burst Step never had.
Those two felt worn smooth by use.
Prism Shift still had edges.
"You could at least pretend to cooperate," he thought.
He reset his stance and tried again, this time choosing the mirror beside the basin as a closer anchor.
The transition was cleaner. He reappeared where intended, though a spike of pressure behind his eyes followed immediately after. Manageable.
He tested a third shift toward the metal tray on the table.
Too much correction entered the movement halfway through. Space twisted unevenly, and he arrived crouched on the bed with nausea rolling through his stomach.
Riven sat there for several seconds.
"How arrogant can a skill be?" he muttered.
That part, at least, he understood.
After another twenty minutes of measured attempts, a pattern became clear. Prism Shift rewarded commitment and punished hesitation. If he chose a path cleanly, the movement held. If he doubted during the transfer, the backlash worsened.
Strong skill. Expensive operating costs.
He stopped before the headache deepened into something that would waste the rest of the day. There was no point injuring himself in a rented room. More importantly, the room itself had become a limitation. He needed distance, surfaces, and privacy.
Privacy most of all.
Riven set the furniture back in place and moved to the window.
Across the alley, a man stood beside a shuttered shop smoking with the patience of someone being paid for it. The cigarette had burned low, but he made no move to replace it or leave. His attention wandered often enough to seem casual, yet always returned to the entrance of Riven's building.
Riven let the curtain fall halfway.
"Subtle."
He waited without moving for a full minute, then checked again through the narrow gap.
The smoker remained.
A second man had appeared farther down the alley near a produce cart. Younger. Cleaner jacket. Pretending interest in bruised fruit while using the cart's polished scale to watch the same doorway.
That settled it.
Someone was asking questions with money attached.
Riven left through the back stairs.
The rear exit opened into a narrow service lane that smelled of wet brick and old oil. He crossed two connecting alleys, entered a busier street, then joined the pedestrian flow without hurry. Crowds rewarded calm people and exposed nervous ones. He gave the street nothing memorable.
At a spice stall, he paused long enough to force anyone tracking him to choose between waiting and revealing themselves. At a cloth market, he changed direction twice through rows of hanging fabric. By the time he emerged onto a tram road three blocks away, no familiar faces remained nearby.
Not professionals, then.
Good.
Professionals charged more attention than he currently deserved.
Riven spent the next hour walking districts he usually ignored. He was searching for the same thing wealthy men bought easily and poor men found by patience: usable space.
The lower city held plenty of abandoned structures, but most belonged unofficially to gangs, addicts, squatters, or men too unstable to classify neatly. He passed a collapsed warehouse occupied by six dogs and one knife-wielding owner. He passed an old machine yard where teenagers were gambling on bare-knuckle fights. He passed a storage block that would have been perfect if not for the three armed lookouts pretending not to be armed.
Then he found the lot.
High concrete walls on three sides. Rusted fencing at the front. Scattered metal frames, broken panels, and discarded equipment left across open ground. Enough reflective surfaces to train with. Enough debris to explain noise. Enough isolation that no neighbor would complain first and ask later.
Interesting.
Riven did not enter immediately. Need made men obvious.
He circled once, marked the side approaches, noted the blind corners, and moved on as if it had never caught his attention.
By the time he returned home through a different route, the alley watchers were gone.
That meant little. Men hired for simple surveillance often failed repeatedly before being replaced by better ones.
Inside the room, Riven sat on the edge of the bed and counted what mattered.
Coins were low.
The Wraith core was with Daris until prices peaked.
Prism Shift needed training before it became dependable.
Unknown people had begun spending money to learn about him.
He leaned back and looked at the ceiling.
Yesterday, survival had been enough.
Today, survival required infrastructure.
The thought almost made him laugh.
Tomorrow he would inspect the yard properly.
He needed a place no one could take from him.
Tomorrow, he would test whether the yard was abandoned—or defended.