The Guild's assessment floor sat forty stories up, a training arena ringed with observation glass and enough sensor equipment to map a fight down to the millisecond. Ezra had seen it exactly once before, years ago, pressed against the observation glass with the other E-Ranks on an orientation tour, watching S-Ranks spar like it was a sport instead of a warning.He hadn't expected to be standing on the floor itself two days later, in a Guild-issued training suit that fit wrong everywhere, waiting for a panel of six people behind the glass to decide what he was.He definitely hadn't expected Damon."You've got to be kidding me," Ezra said, as Damon strolled out from the opposite tunnel in full combat gear, insignia polished, expression somewhere between delighted and insulted."Volunteered," Damon said. "Panel wanted a controlled Rank-appropriate opponent for the assessment. I figured, who better than the guy who's been watching your file blow up my morning briefings for two days straig

The shop on Thornwick Street didn't look like it belonged to a man who'd once hunted gods.Cramped, dim, shelves crowded with the kind of secondhand junk that accumulated in places nobody watched closely, chipped mugs and dead radios and a glass case of pocket watches that hadn't kept accurate time in decades. A bell over the door announced them with a thin, tired chime. **Voss & Sons** was painted on the window in gold letters gone patchy with age, and Ezra thought again about what Garrick had said in Room 4, that there'd never been a son at all.Rourke stayed half a step behind him, badge visible but not raised, professional caution written into every line of her posture even in a place this ordinary. Pressure Sense mapped the shop's interior automatically now, without Ezra having to think about it, air pressure settling into the shape of a room with no hidden threats, just an old man behind a counter who looked up like he'd been expecting them at exactly this hour and not a minute