Morning didn't arrive with a flourish; it just sort of settled in.
The light bled into the city slowly, trading the silence of the night for a steady, rising hum of shutters banging open and neighbors calling out to one another. It was the sound of a city putting itself back together—not because it was safe, but because life didn't have the luxury of waiting.
The man moved with the crowd.
He left the hiding spot early. He didn't want to look like he was in a hurry, so he aimed for that sweet spot of morning activity when people are too focused on their first task of the day to really look at a stranger's face. He pulled the cloak tight around his shoulders. It was an old, nondescript thing, and it did more to hide him than any shadow ever could. He kept his head down, matching the steady, bored pace of the workers around him.
His mind felt sharp—too sharp.
The city in the daylight was a different beast. At night, it was a place of fear, but now it was a place of habit. The guards didn't look for monsters; they looked for things that broke the flow. An argument at a stall, a runner in a crowd, someone standing too still—those were the things that drew the eye.
So, he made sure he flowed.
He ducked into a street lined with smithies and workshops. The air was thick with the scent of coal smoke and hot oil, and the rhythmic clack-clack of hammers gave him a kind of rhythmic cover. He slowed down near the edge of a forge, watching the apprentices lugging heavy crates. He didn't stop; he just drifted in behind them, mirroring their tired slouch.
He felt the city's logic pressing in on him. To the world, he wasn't a threat anymore. He was just another person who was slightly late for a job he didn't want. It wasn't exactly a comfortable feeling, being invisible. It felt more like being erased.
Further down, the street opened into a market. It was already loud, the vendors tossing fruit and shouting prices with the practiced exhaustion of people who had done this a thousand times. He moved through the stalls without looking at the goods. He kept his eyes unfocused, making sure he never accidentally made eye contact with a seller.
He listened to the chatter around him. People were talking about the price of grain or the weather, but every so often, he caught a whispered mention of the "trouble" at the temple the night before. They spoke about it as an inconvenience—a reason for the late bells or the closed roads—rather than a catastrophe.
The city was already moving on. It was absorbing the chaos, filing it away under "accidents" so it could keep its doors open.
He stopped briefly at a stone water trough. A young boy was leaning against it, looking half-asleep while his goats drank. The man rested a hand on the cool stone, taking a breath to steady himself. He let his shoulders sag, playing the part of a man who'd been on his feet too long. To anyone watching, he was just tired.
When he started walking again, he headed toward the main avenue. The patrols were thicker here, their armor gleaming in the sun. He didn't try to hide or duck into an alley. That would have been a giveaway. Instead, he walked right past them, close enough to hear the leather of their boots creak. One guard's eyes brushed over him, hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then moved on to a loud merchant behind him.
The city was learning to ignore him.
He spent the next hour drifting. He stood by the public squares, staring at the fresh notices being pasted over the old ones, pretending to read while he mapped out the exits. He wasn't wasting time; he was learning the pulse of the place. By the time the sun was overhead, the tension in the air had flattened. The search hadn't stopped, but it had turned into a chore for the guards rather than a hunt. That was his window.
He took a long, winding route back to the hideout. He made sure to double back just enough to be safe, but not enough to look suspicious. Every turn was deliberate, a small test to see if anyone was following the scent.
When he finally slipped back into the cramped, dark space beneath the streets, the silence felt like a relief. The girl was waiting. She didn't look up right away, but he could tell she was listening to his footsteps, checking for any hint of panic.
"Nobody remembered you," she said softly. It wasn't a question.
He pulled off the cloak and folded it carefully. "Better than that. They didn't even see me. There's a difference."
She looked at him then, her eyes searching his face. She gave a small, slow nod. "Good. That means you can go back out tomorrow."
He thought about the "cost" of that. The more he went out, the more familiar his face would become. Familiarity was a double-edged sword; eventually, people start to wonder why they keep seeing the same man who never seems to have anywhere to go.
"Tomorrow I'll listen closer," he said. "I don't need to hear what the city is saying. I need to find the places where it's too quiet."
The girl watched him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. "Just be careful. A quiet spot is usually where someone is hiding a mistake they don't want found."
The words stuck with him. She was right. The cracks in the system didn't scream for attention; they sat in the shadows, waiting for someone like him to trip over them.
Silence fell between them, but it wasn't heavy. It was the silence of two people who were finally starting to understand the rules of the game. Above them, the city continued to go about its business, completely unaware that the man it was looking for was right beneath its feet, learning how to breathe in the dark.