East-Port Harbor Town – Rat Street, Number Four. 05:55 AM.
A thick, salt-heavy sea mist clung to the narrow alleyways of East-Port like a damp shroud. The sun had yet to fully crest the horizon, leaving the port town in a state of perpetual, humid twilight. This was a place where the shadows felt greasy, and the air carried the pungent symphony of rotting fish, stagnant bilge water, and cheap, fermented grain. Rats the size of house cats scurried between mounds of discarded crates, their red eyes glinting with a hunger that matched the desperate human inhabitants of the district.
A figure clad in a nondescript charcoal-grey cloak moved through the fog with the silence of a drifting ghost. Every footfall was calculated, every breath measured.
