"No," Jaegar said. He was standing very still, looking at something on the alley wall that the others hadn't noticed yet.
"Look at this."
They looked.
On the brickwork, at roughly eye level, someone had left a mark. Not a scorch mark from combat—something deliberate.
A symbol, drawn or perhaps branded into the stone with controlled arcane energy: a falcon in descent, talons extended, rendered in clean lines that spoke of precision rather than haste.
Veronica's expression changed.
"That's an Arcnyte operational mark," she said.
"That's—" She stopped and looked again.
"That's a division commander's seal. Someone with rank did this. Someone with rank was here."
"Not just someone," Jaegar said.
His voice had gone very quiet. Not the quiet of uncertainty—the quiet of someone whose mind has just completed a calculation and does not particularly care for the result.
