They did not walk toward the city like people seeking mercy.
They walked toward it like a controlled breach.
From the ridge, the settlement had looked wrong in a way Felicity couldn't immediately name. Not wrong as in monstrous, not wrong as in ruined. Wrong as in… too intact for the end of the world. Towers still stood in symmetrical lines instead of collapsing into chaos. Smoke rose in measured columns, not random drift. Patrols moved with cadence. The outer barricades weren't piles of scavenged metal, but layered defense lanes welded with intention.
Survival, yes.
But not the desperate kind.
This place had made the jump from surviving to structuring, and once a city structured itself, it grew teeth.
Teeth meant hierarchy, Hierarchy meant one throat you could squeeze.
That was the plan.
