Shanghai's pre-dawn streets smelled like street food and impending violence.
The enforcers weren't even trying to be subtle. Twenty-plus shadow-things arranged in a semicircle around the rift location, which was apparently in an alley behind what looked like a very nice dumpling restaurant.
"They're guarding dumplings," I said. "Veyrith's enforcers are literally guarding a dumpling shop."
"They're guarding the rift that happens to be behind a dumpling shop," Mara corrected, her scanner going haywire.
"Same thing."
"It's really not."
The enforcers hadn't attacked yet, just... watched us. Waiting, which was somehow worse than immediate violence.
"This feels like a trap," I observed.
"Because it is a trap," Azryth said, his power already manifesting around his hands in that way that meant things were about to get messy. "Veyrith knows we're coming now, he's had hours to prepare."
"How reassuring."
