The old mill on Kell Street had been abandoned since the textile trade collapsed two decades before the first Fracture opened. It was a sprawling thing of rusted steel and broken windows, its machinery still sitting where the last shift had left it, its roof a patchwork of holes that let the sodium streetlights bleed through in thin orange columns.
Cael approached from the north, through an alley that ran parallel to the mill's eastern wall. Surface Shift was cold on his skin, his face unmemorable, his footsteps silent on the cracked asphalt. The Hound was alert, tracking the signatures inside, categorising them one by one.
Lisen Vaal was easy to read. Her energy was sharp, contained, the kind of pressure that came from a mage-class who'd spent years learning to hold her output at the ed
