Ludwig understood the assignment. The guard was right, this place felt far too unbothered with the laws of the empire, not in the subtle way where corruption hid under etiquette, but in the open, shameless way where the street itself told you nobody would come to save you.
The air carried a greasy tang of smoke, old stew, and refuse that had nowhere to go, and the cold made the stink sharper, as if it wanted to bite instead of drift. The stone beneath his boots was uneven, patched and repatched, and the seams between repairs looked like scars that never stopped reopening.
A cesspool of death and poverty without rhyme or reason. A mad Duke, a broken city, and a lot of crim in the heart of the Dukedom.
Even the people moved wrong, not with the relaxed pace of a city that still believed in tomorrow, but with that hunted rhythm: shoulders tucked in, eyes darting, hands never far from pockets or sleeves. The ones who weren't hiding looked like they were waiting to be hit.
