The Imperial Training Grounds were not a place of beauty. They were a sprawling expanse of packed red clay, sweat-stained sand, and the heavy, rhythmic thud of wooden practice swords meeting leather-bound dummies. The air here was usually thick with the scent of ozone and the scorched earth left behind by the solar-mages of the Sun-Guard. It was a place for men of iron, for soldiers who valued the calloused palm over the silken glove.
But this morning, the grit of the yard was interrupted by a splash of impossible color.
Vera sat on a weathered stone bench at the edge of the agility course, her back against a rough-hewn wooden pillar. She wasn't wearing the midnight-blue silk, nor the heavy ceremonial furs of the North. She wore a simple, sleeveless tunic of undyed linen and sturdy trousers tucked into worn leather boots—the kind of clothes a thief would wear to disappear into the smog of the Grey District.
