In the heart of Riverport, surrounded by the gleaming glass spires of modern progress, lay a sprawling scar of history known as The Old Quarter. It was a massive City-within-a-village, a chaotic maze of narrow alleys and crumbling tenements that had survived decades of urban expansion. Because of its complex history of ownership and the astronomical costs associated with Compulsory redevelopment, the district remained a stagnant pocket of the past. The government could only nibble at its edges, a slow "cannibalization" of the land that left the core untouched.
This was where Iris Marlowe and Byron Whitfield spent their days—not in the comfort of an office, but in the grueling heat of a construction site on the district's perimeter.
The summer sun over Riverport was a physical weight, a b
