The city of Rewen breathed a different kind of tension by day.

  With the dawn mist burned off by the sun, the streets came alive with carts, shouts, and the constant shuffle of boots over cobblestones. Patrols moved like clockwork, checkpoints rotated hourly, and steam curled from chimneys in rigid formation. Rewen was a garrison wrapped in the illusion of a city.

  Karl decided it was the perfect place to disappear.

  And so, in the aftermath of their arrival, he did what no revolutionary would have done.

  He let the players loose.

  ---

  “Go find work,” he’d said that morning, arms crossed as the five stood in the safehouse courtyard. “Blend in. Stay quiet. Don’t pick fights. Don’t draw attention.”

  The players had nodded with varying levels of comprehension.

  By noon, they’d fanned out across three districts.

  The pervert got hired by a tavern as a dishwasher, though was demoted to cleaning latrines after he complimented the owner's wife. The researcher found his way to a forge, where he began asking the smith questions so advanced the man assumed he was some eccentric noble’s dropout son. The ex-soldier joined a labor crew reinforcing old ramparts. The adrenaline junkie talked her way into hauling crates at the western dock, then challenged her supervisor to a push-up contest. The student, being the most useless, got conned by a local kid into cleaning out goat stalls for “apprenticeship credit.”

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  They thought they were living.

  They never noticed the eyes on them.

  ---

  The “Ravens,” as everyone called them, were already watching.

  Two of them followed the dishwasher and the student through the east market—black coats blending with shadow, silent boots on stone. They said nothing. Just listened. Observed. Took note of the impossible accents, the jarring hair colors, the way none of these five spoke the imperial tongue.

  And none of them acted like locals.

  More importantly, none of them noticed they were being followed.

  ---

  Elsewhere, in the dim cellar of the safehouse, Tanir stood over a battered chair, arms folded.

  Maric sat in it, bruised but unbroken.

  “You think you’re clever,” the lieutenant said. “You think this ends with money.”

  Tanir shrugged. “Ends with me not dead. That’s all I ask.”

  “You don’t know what you’re part of.”

  “I don’t care,” Tanir replied, and shoved a cloth back in Maric’s mouth.

  ---

  By dusk, the five players regrouped at the safehouse, laughing, bickering, and recounting their “quests.” None noticed the man with the long coat who leaned against a lamppost across the alley.

  He didn’t write anything down. Just watched.

  Ten minutes later, he was gone.

  ---

  Three blocks away, in a boarded-up townhouse, two Ravens stood over a window.

  “That’s the building,” one said, pointing across to the warehouse safehouse.

  “You sure?”

  “Look at the door. Reinforced. Windows shuttered from the inside. Ventilation gaps. No signage. No foot traffic except the same five idiots and one or two locals. You ever seen a bakery without smoke?”

  His partner nodded.

  “Safehouse.”

  He pulled out a metal token engraved with a silver bird. Turned it over once in his gloved fingers.

  “I’ll report it,” he said. “They’re not normal.”

  “And the one giving orders?” the other asked.

  A pause.

  “He’s worse.”

  ---

  Across the city, the sun dipped behind the western towers. The streets cooled. The city exhaled.

  And far beneath its calm, the net began to close.