By the time the sun was high enough to start baking the street grime, Greko Academy had already finished scrubbing Frankie from its books.
The celebration had leaked out of the gates and into the upper terraces. A loud, sickeningly expensive blur of laughter and flutes, with that sharp metallic ozone smell clinging to everything like the memory of a storm. Servants dodged through the crowds, balancing silver trays loaded with food that cost more than Frankie's entire childhood, while families toasted futures bought long before their children ever stepped onto the marble. The gods had made their picks, and the city was getting hammered on the leftover glory.
Frankie headed the other way.
She left marble and gold behind, cutting toward the older districts where the buildings leaned together for support. Down here, the stone wasn't white. It was a bruised grey, stained by decades of soot and kitchen grease. Laundry lines webbed the alleys. Nippers played in the dirt, their faces smeared with the kind of dust that settled deep and stayed.
She ducked into a recessed doorway, ditched the academy hood, and shoved on a battered dark cloak that smelled faintly of old rain. The mask stayed. In this part of Novara Prime, showing your face was an invitation to the wrong kind of attention.
She took to the rooftops. It was faster, and she preferred the risk of a loose tile to the certainty of a guard's questions. Besides, from up here, the city didn't bother pretending.
Beyond the massive walls, the world just stopped. Old highways twisted through collapsed towers. A permanent shimmer hung over the ruins, heat-warped and wrong. Everyone knew what breathing that air meant.
The old-timers called it the Great Tear, usually after a few drinks. Twenty years ago the sky split open and the angels came down—not the gentle figures from prayer books, but things of white fire that looked at humanity like something to be burned away.
They would've finished the purge if the old gods hadn't woken up and decided they weren't ready to lose their worshippers.
Frankie had heard the stories until they felt like background noise: Thor's hammer crashing into radiant shields; Ra's burning barge turning the sky into a furnace; the Jade Emperor's court tearing through wings of light. A war that broke the world and left it limping.
Afterward, lines were drawn. The gods took the cities. The angels took the wastes. Everyone else learned to live in between, paying in blood.
She dropped from a rusty fire escape, the metal groaning under her boots, and landed at a heavy door. Three sharp knocks. A viewing slit slid open, a bloodshot eye checked her over, then the bolts screamed back.
Inside, the air hit like a wet blanket—sweat, gun oil, damp timber. Her crew scattered across crates and lumpy mattresses. Six kids who knew how to vanish better than they knew their own birthdays.
Luca looked up. He always did. Not a thief by nature, just too stubborn to let her walk the dark alone.
"You're late," he said, a tired smile making him look older than he was.
"Hard to move fast when you're wading through that much arrogance," Frankie said, tossing her cloak onto a crate.
Someone snorted from the corner. "Any divine luck rub off on you? Or are we still skint?"
"Crumbs only," she muttered.
Luca handed her a hunk of bread. Stale enough to crack a molar, but she took it like it was a feast. Their fingers brushed. A small, grounding warmth. More real than any of the light-shows she'd seen at the Academy.
"The assignment?" Luca asked.
"Auxiliary."
His jaw tightened. He didn't offer comfort he couldn't promise. He just sat beside her, shoulder solid against hers.
Outside, a temple bell groaned. Somewhere high above, Zeus was probably throwing lightning for the applause.
Frankie chewed the dry bread and stared at the peeling wallpaper.
Tomorrow, she'd be marched through a gate into the grey hell beyond the walls. Tomorrow, she was officially just another body for the grinder.
She didn't pray. The gods didn't listen to girls from soot-stained streets.
But she made herself a promise anyway.
She wasn't going out without a fight.