Old Port Landa felt like the rest of Port Landa had agreed to forget.
Erik drove slowly, one hand light on the wheel, the other resting near the console as the streets narrowed around him. The buildings here leaned inward, stone foundations exposed where newer layers had failed and been abandoned. Upper floors sagged slightly over alleys never meant to carry this much weight. Repairs existed only where collapse would have blocked traffic. Everything else endured by habit.
The politicians did not bother looking on this side of the city. He knew that without needing confirmation. The roads were too uneven for convoys, the air too thick with salt and rust and old cooking oil. No banners hung from these buildings. No public screens announced policy victories or trade successes. Old Port Landa did not vote loudly enough to matter, and so it had been left to rot with dignity.
Erik did not look like himself. He had taken care with the disguise, not a costume, but a subtraction. His scales were dulled beneath a dermal wrap that broke their pattern into something closer to scar tissue than heritage. His hair was cut short and uneven, dyed a flat, forgettable charcoal. Tinted lenses hid the reflective quality of his eyes.
Even his posture was wrong. He slouched when he walked. Let his shoulders hang. Moved like a man who did not expect to be noticed.
The Prince of Kalindor did not exist here. That was deliberate. This had been their routine for a week now.
Day and night rotations. Short overlaps. No predictable patterns. Watching, recording, cataloging. Looking for weapons. For terror cells. For illegal excavation beneath the city's oldest stone. They had found only the last.
Erik slowed near the first location, the Church of Saints' plaza. Where the newly renovated church squatted atop stone far older than the district itself. He did not stop. He never stopped here anymore. Instead, he circled once, then again, letting the city absorb his presence before pulling into a side street crowded with rusted bicycles and delivery vans that had not moved in days.
He stepped out of the car. Stretching his legs gave him cover to look. And he saw them.
Lira stood on a raised platform across the street, hands resting lightly on the railing as if waiting for someone late to meet her. Her teal-green scales were visible only along her temples where her hood fell back. She wore layered street clothing, loose, practical and forgettable. From a distance, she was just another resident watching traffic.
Below her, Tovin leaned against a stone wall near a shuttered storefront. Bronze scales dulled beneath grime-colored fabric. Sleeves rolled high enough to suggest labor rather than concealment. His stance was casual, weight settled into one hip, eyes unfocused in a way that suggested boredom.
Erik knew better.
They had been here for days. Switching positions. Switching hours. Watching the same doors, the same patterns.
He tapped his comm once.
"Position One," he said quietly. "Anything new?"
Lira answered first. "Church volunteers doing what they always do. Same as yesterday."
Tovin added, "More movement than before, and Elara seems to be here often. More than usual. And we have seen more of the digging crews go in. We think they are doing more excavating."
Erik's gaze tracked the church façade. Clean stone. Carefully maintained. A deliberate contrast to the decay around it.
"Anyone unfamiliar?" he asked.
A pause.
"Yes," Lira said. "Not from the church, and not an elemental. A human. Male. He has been carrying a sword. He hides himself really well. There is another older human with him as well, also male."
Erik's attention sharpened.
"He's careful," Tovin continued. "Doesn't linger. Doesn't draw eyes. Moves like he knows how to be overlooked."
Erik scanned the street again, and found him.
The man stood near a vendor stall across the way, posture loose, gaze unfocused. The sword was wrapped and worn in a way that made it seem like luggage rather than a weapon. His build was lean, sharp in places, as if anger had carved him down over time. Beside him stood an older man, broader, calmer, face open in a way that drew no suspicion at all.
They did not look like zealots. They did not look like tourists. And Erik guessed they were not looking to join either.
"They've been visiting multiple churches," Lira said. "Always together. Margo and Davin saw them as well. I think Raen noticed as well."
"And no interference?" Erik asked.
"None," Tovin replied. "People look past them. They talk with some of the clerics and priests."
Erik watched as the pair moved on, swallowed by foot traffic without effort.
Interesting.
"Keep observing," Erik said.
He returned to the car and drove on.
The second location lay beneath the burned archive, a blackened shell the city had never bothered to reclaim in the old civic district. Erik parked two streets away and continued on foot, letting the uneven stone dictate his pace.
Raen stood near the edge of a collapsed stairwell, reviewing a transit notice that hadn't been updated in years. His iron-gray scales gave him a heavier presence even wrapped in civilian clothes, but he had learned how to soften it. He looked like someone waiting for a bus that would never come.
Above him, Fliss perched on a light fixture, feathers bright even under the grime of Old Port Landa. Reds and yellows threaded through darker plumage, her clothing just as vivid. She should have been obvious. She never was.
Erik paused near a cracked pillar, stretching his shoulders as if stiff from walking.
Fliss leaned down slightly, voice quick and lilting. "Same pattern here. Church presence earlier."
Raen added, "Subsurface access confirmed. Quiet work. Margo said that they requested this site a day ago, and they got approval."
"Only known church researchers have come into the site," Fliss said.
"Nothing else?" Erik asked.
"Negative," they responded.
Erik nodded once and moved on.
The third site, beneath a condemned maintenance hub, was the most neglected of all. The city had fenced it off decades ago and never returned. And the church claimed it. Erik drove this time, stopping where he could see without being seen.
Davin stood near a retaining wall, posture rigid even in civilian clothes. His expression was as flat as ever. Beside him, Margo crouched near a storm drain, slate balanced on her knee, fingers flicking.
Erik radioed them.
"Anything?" he asked.
"A lot of movement here," Margo said without looking up. "Looks like something is happening, but nothing illegal other than entering the site. We tried to get approval to enter, but the city denied us."
Davin added, "Church observers at irregular intervals. No visible coordination with the other two sites."
"The church across the street has seen more of those gang members than the other two locations," Margo continued. "They are not doing anything as far as we can tell. Veylan is more active now, and seems to be the one coordinating the movements of the church. Nothing illegal yet, just interesting."
Erik looked back toward the street. Three locations. All in Old Port Landa. All beneath places no one with power bothered to visit. And now a human with a sword moving between them.
"Fliss," Erik said into the comm. "New task."
She chirped immediately. "Listening."
"Stay on the human," Erik said. "The one with the sword. Observe only. I want to know where he goes and who he speaks to."
A brief pause. Then, brightly, "Oh, a new task, that's exciting."
"It's not," Erik replied.
"We will see," she said, already gone.
Erik drove on, looping the district once more. Beneath Old Port Landa, the city's oldest stone was being touched again. And above it, too many people were moving carefully.
The day ended without incident. Old Port Landa slipped into the evening the way it always did, lights blooming unevenly, neon bleeding into wet stone, the district neither sleeping nor waking. Erik completed his last circuit in the car, engine idling low as he watched pedestrians thin and shift. Shop grates half-lowered. Radios murmuring behind doors.
A week of this. Watching. Logging. Compiling fragments of technically illegal excavation and nothing bold enough to act on.
Erik was slowing at an intersection when the sound reached him. Not close. Not Far either. A distant concussion, carried along the river and reflected back by stone and water. A heavy whump that rolled through the city like a breath being forced out of something enormous.
Erik straightened instantly.
"Report," he said into the comm.
The responses came almost on top of one another.
"Explosion! Northwest," Raen said.
"Smoke visible from my position," Margo added.
"River sector," Davin confirmed.
Erik leaned forward, eyes already searching the skyline. A dark plume was rising beyond the low buildings, backlit by emergency lights beginning to flicker on.
"Converge on the site," Erik ordered. "Fast as you can. If this is the church we need to catch them first."
Fliss cut in a heartbeat later. "Captain, do you want me to pull back?"
Erik didn't hesitate.
"No," he said. "Stay on the human. The rest of you can handle this."
A pause. "Understood," Fliss replied.
Erik turned the car hard toward the river, sirens beginning to echo distantly as police units mobilized ahead of him. This wasn't on the south side. It wasn't Church ground. It wasn't one of the three sites they'd been watching. Erik wanted to shout in frustration. He let himself get blinded.
A Republic building rose near the water, a structure built around a unification monument that predated Old Port Landa's decline. Stone and steel layered together over decades of maintenance and quiet modernization. Half of the statue was gone when Erik arrived, torn away by the blast. Fire crawled up the building's outer face.
The bridge choked immediately.
There was only one crossing here, wide enough to carry vehicles into the river district, and Old Port Landa poured toward it like blood toward a wound. By the time Erik reached the bottleneck, the street was already clogged, cars abandoned at bad angles, people spilling out of side streets, voices raised not in panic yet but in curiosity.
Smoke curled above the buildings beyond the river, thick and dark against the lowering sky.
Erik swore under his breath and cut the engine.
"On me," he ordered, already out of the car. "Stick tight."
They converged almost at once. Raen came in from the east, coat half-unbuttoned, scales along his neck catching the light as he pushed through the crowd. Lira and Tovin emerged from opposite sidewalks, slipping into position without speaking. Davin appeared behind, steady and unhurried, eyes already scanning for collapse points and secondary threats. Margo hung back, she was on the tablet, most likely trying to find access to the cameras around the building. They moved as one unit without needing to acknowledge it.
The crowd pressed in from all sides, dockworkers, shopkeepers, passersby drawn by smoke and sirens and the simple instinct to watch something break. Erik shouldered through first, posture rigid, gaze forward. When people didn't move fast enough, Raen and Tovin flanked him, making their presence known as they helped to clear a path.
"Clear a lane," Erik said, voice calm.
They did. With a little persuading from the team.
The bridge spat them out onto the riverfront just as the fire came fully into view. The Republic building loomed over the water, its stone façade cracked and blackened, one side of the monumental statue sheared away as if bitten clean through. Flames climbed the exposed interior.
"Police are still staging," Lira said, eyes flicking toward the perimeter forming behind them. "Fire crews haven't entered yet."
"They won't," Erik replied. "Not until they know what kind of burn this is."
He didn't wait for permission.
They entered through a service corridor on the river-facing side, stone and steel, intact, smoke thin enough to breathe. Erik led. The building hummed faintly beneath their boots, old systems straining under new damage. Heat rolled toward them as they advanced. Not wild yet. Controlled. Hungry.
"Burn," Erik said.
The word wasn't a command so much as an allowance.
Raen exhaled first.
Steam bled from the seams of his coat, faint at first, then thicker, white vapor curling off his shoulders and neck as the internal pressure shifted. Lira followed, jaw tightening as moisture hissed into the air around her. Even Tovin, usually restrained, let it out in a slow, deliberate breath.
Erik did the same.
He felt it ignite behind his sternum, not pain, not heat, but pressure. A tightening coil deep within his chest, as familiar as breath, as old as instinct. The organ flexed, opening pathways he did not consciously control, and Vigor surged forward to meet the demand. The air around him shimmered.
Excess Vigor rolled off his skin in steady waves, beading along his collar and cuffs before evaporating. It wasn't dramatic. It was functional. The body venting excess energy as it always did when pushed past comfort and into purpose.
"Stay together," he said. "No heroics."
They advanced.
As the heat thickened, Erik shifted his focus, not outward, but inward. He reached, not with hands or eyes, but with intent, feeding Vigor into his vision the way one might lean into a muscle long trained for strain.
Questing. The world dimmed.
Not darkness, absence. Edges softened. Color drained. And within that muted field, threads emerged.
Pyra.
Fine strands at first, like glowing veins suspended in air, pulsing softly through the smoke and flame. They clustered where the fire burned hottest, coiling and lashing in patterns that obeyed no wind Erik could feel.
The fire wasn't chaos. It was structure.
"There," Erik said, pointing, not at the flames themselves, but at the dense knot of Anima feeding them.
Raen nodded once, understanding without explanation. Erik stepped forward.
He raised his hand, not theatrically, not as a gesture of dominance, but as an anchor. Vigor flowed down his arm, guided by the simple mechanics of motion. Reach. Grip. Pull.
The fire reacted.
Flames bent toward him, stretching unnaturally, drawn along invisible lines as Erik caught hold of the Pyra threads and reeled them in. Heat spiked for a breathless moment, steam erupting from his body in a violent hiss and then it collapsed.
The fire died not with a roar, but with a gasp.
Flames guttered, starved, falling inward as Erik pulled the Anima free and absorbed it back into himself. The air cooled rapidly, smoke thinning as the remaining fire sputtered and went dark.
Silence followed.
Davin watched it all without comment, standing far back at the rear, eyes sharp. He was unable to tolerate the heat like a dragonkin, and unable to touch Pyra Anima since mermaid blood flowed within his veins.
"You good?" Raen asked.
Erik lowered his hand, breath controlled, steam dissipating around him as he released his burn. "Yes."
They moved deeper, neutralizing smaller flare-ups with efficiency now that the core was gone. When they emerged again, the fire was contained, the building no longer actively dying.
Police flooded in moments later, shouting orders Erik ignored.
He stood in the cooling air, looking up at the ruined statue, at the clean lines of destruction. No bodies. As his team went deeper into the building, it was empty. A perfect statement. No casualties, but a clear message against the Republic, and Kalindor. This was definitely done by the church. Erik ground his teeth in frustration at the failure of his team. He was here to stop this. And yet…
Fliss's voice crackled in his ear, distant, urgent.
"Captain. I saw it. The human, he burned. And, and, and his sword burned! It was on fire. And the Church moved crates underground while everyone was looking here, but not just that! I think I saw him!"
"Not yet Fliss," Erik commanded. "Give the report later."
"But, sir-"
"Not yet," Erik snapped. He rarely raised his voice, but the stress was wearing on him.
Erik closed his eyes. A setup maybe? If Fliss did see the church moving crates, then it could have been a distraction. Why now, and how long was this planned? Must have been before they arrived because there was nothing pointing towards any other part of the city. Chief Talion had his men watching the other church buildings in the city, and nothing of note was ever reported. No one of suspicion moved this way the entire time they have been watching Old Port Landa either. Such a perfectly executed plan was bothersome. Because that meant someone higher up had helped. The council was supportive of the church, but this? Unless they did not know, or ask questions.
"Stay on him," he said quietly.
"Who?" Fliss responded.
"The human. If the church was doing something, give me a detailed report. I will look it over and maybe we can act upon this. I do not want to lose that man."
"Copy."
The city buzzed around them, sirens, voices, speculation already taking root.
Erik felt none of it. Only the certainty settled cold in his chest. It had been a demonstration. And it had been easy.