The Imperial City's perfume of jasmine and marble dust turned cloying as Vell's team entered their assigned quarters. What might have passed for austerity elsewhere felt deliberately theatrical here - rough-hewn walls framed by gilded doorways, straw pallets arranged beneath stained-glass windows depicting imperial victories. Ada's boot scuffed against a mosaic hidden beneath grime, revealing a single golden tile shaped like a snarling wolf's eye.
"Charming," Sia drawled, tracing a finger along a suspiciously fresh bloodstain on the doorframe. "I give the decor three days before it kills someone."
Lira didn't look up from her workbench of scavenged floorboards. "Four hours," she corrected, soldering wires to a resonator crystal that hummed in dissonant thirds with the city's ambient magic.
"The dampening field in these walls isn't just soundproofing. It's chewing through my circuits like a starved gremlin."
