Adaranthe rose from the plains at dawn.

Gabriel saw it first as a dark mass against the horizon, too large to be a hill, too defined to be cloud. The road had been climbing for hours, gentle slopes that accumulated into elevation without announcement, and now the city sat ahead like something that had always been there.

Stone and smoke.

The details resolved slowly as he walked. Walls thick enough to hold back armies. Towers that broke the skyline in jagged clusters. Buildings pressed so close together they seemed to share the same foundation, rising in layers that blocked the sun before it could reach the streets below.

The city was large enough to feel indifferent to him.

The road grew crowded as morning stretched on.

Traders drove carts loaded with grain, timber, cloth, and iron. Labourers walked in groups, tools slung over shoulders, voices low with exhaustion that hadn't left from the day before. Pilgrims moved among them, robes marking their purpose, though no one gave them space or deference.

Officials rode past on horseback, cloaks bearing seals Gabriel didn't recognise, their passage forcing the crowd to part without acknowledgement.

Movement was regulated, not chaotic.

Guards stood at intervals along the approach, watching without engaging. Their presence controlled flow rather than enforced it. People moved because the road funnelled them forward, not because they were told to.

Violence existed here, but it was absorbed into structure.

Gabriel kept his pace steady, joining the press of bodies without resistance. The illusion held cleanly. Guards looked at him the way they looked at everyone else, registering his presence as a body rather than a threat. His eyes were seen but not processed. Red met indifference and moved on.

No holy gestures. No whispered prayers.

He was unremarkable, and Adaranthe had no time for the unremarkable.

The gates came into view as the sun climbed higher.

Massive iron-banded doors stood open, fixed in place by brackets driven deep into stone. The archway above them was carved with symbols worn smooth by weather and time, their meaning lost or irrelevant. Guards flanked the entrance, spears held upright, attention drifting across faces without settling.

The crowd funnelled through without slowing.

Gabriel entered with them.

A guard's gaze passed over him once, lingered for half a breath, then moved on. No questions. He passed because there was nothing to stop.

The gates closed behind him without ceremony.

Inside, Adaranthe was different.

The road widened immediately, splitting into avenues that branched in directions marked by worn stone and faded paint. Buildings rose on either side, three stories, four, sometimes more, their upper floors leaning inward until the sky became a narrow strip of grey overhead.

Smoke drifted from chimneys and forges, thick enough to taste. Voices layered into a constant hum that had no source and no end.

The city was loud and dense.

Suffering was present but normalised.

A man sat against a wall near the gate, one leg bent wrong beneath him, hand extended without hope. People walked past without looking. A woman shouted from a second-story window, her words swallowed by the noise before they could land.

Two children fought over something in the gutter, fists connecting with wet thuds, and no one stopped them.

Gabriel kept walking.

The crowd absorbed him, carrying him deeper into the city without effort. He became smaller here. On the road, one death had mattered. In Adaranthe, death was statistical.

He felt this without articulating it.

The avenues narrowed as he moved away from the main thoroughfare. The buildings pressed closer, their foundations cracked and patched with mortar that didn't match. Laundry hung from lines stretched between windows, dripping into the street below. The smell changed. Rot. Waste. Smoke. Sweat.

He turned down a side street and stopped.

Ahead, two men held a third against a wall. One of them spoke quietly, words too low to carry. The third man shook his head. The second one drove a fist into his stomach, then again. The man folded, breath leaving him in a harsh gasp.

No one else stopped.

The street continued moving around them. A cart rolled past. A woman carrying a basket stepped around the scene without breaking stride. A child watched from a doorway, then disappeared inside when the door opened behind him.

Public. Mundane. Unremarkable.

Gabriel did not slow.

Intervention here would change nothing. The beating would end or it wouldn't. The man would survive or he wouldn't. Another would take his place tomorrow, or later today, and the city would continue as it always had.

The gratitude from the road echoed briefly.

Not as temptation. As contrast.

The travellers had thanked him because the road allowed moments. Adaranthe erased them.

He understood the truth of cities now.

The road had space for individual acts. Cities reduced everything to pattern. Violence, mercy, suffering, relief. All of it flattened into background noise that no one had time to hear.

Gabriel turned down another street, then another, following instinct rather than direction. The buildings here were older, their facades cracked and stained by decades of weather. Signs hung above doorways, marking inns, taverns, boarding houses. Most were faded beyond reading.

He stopped in front of one.

No name. No sign. Just a door slightly ajar, light bleeding through the gap.

He pushed it open.

The interior was narrow and dim. A staircase climbed one wall, its railing worn smooth by hands. A woman sat behind a counter near the door, her attention fixed on a ledger. She looked up as he entered, gaze passing over him once before returning to the page.

"Room?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Three copper a night. Week up front if you're staying."

Gabriel placed the coins on the counter.

The woman counted them without speaking, then reached beneath the counter and produced a key. She set it down next to the coins.

"Third floor. End of the hall. Don't break anything."

Gabriel took the key and climbed the stairs.

The room was small. A bed. A table. A window overlooking the street below. The walls were bare, the floor uneven. It smelled of old wood and dust.

He set his pack down and moved to the window.

Below, the street continued. People moved in both directions, their paths intersecting without collision. A merchant argued with a customer. A dog nosed through refuse piled against a wall. Smoke drifted past, carried by wind that couldn't reach the ground.

The illusion still held.

But Adaranthe did not care who he was.

And that was more dangerous than hatred.

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