The lower districts of Ashenveil did not exist on the Ministry of Whispers' primary threat-board.
According to Director Lyss Myrvalis, the soot-choked warren of subterranean tunnels, illegal alchemical distilleries, and unregulated flesh-markets that ran beneath the capital was "acceptable localized decay." The Ministry monitored the high nobility. It tracked Korthane infiltration rings. It did not waste Alpha-tier resources on thieves selling stolen copper wire in the dark.
Sera Myrvalis disagreed.
At twenty-five, she was no longer a junior scribe, though she still wore the unassuming, unadorned gray robes to project total harmlessness. She had spent the last six years slowly, quietly building a shadow network directly underneath her master's paranoid, failing gaze, learning a fundamental truth that the senior operatives in their black leather coats had completely forgotten. The people who live in the dark hear everything the people in the light try to bury.
