The VIP gate dropped them at Crescent Bay with the same sickening lurch Leo remembered from the first crossing. His body handled it better now. Less stomach-sick. Less bone-deep wrongness. Just the brief warmth of the portal's embrace, the moment of displacement where he existed nowhere, and then solid ground under his boots.
The air hit first. Salt and fish. Tar and the faint sweetness of street vendor sugar cakes frying somewhere close. Gulls screamed overhead, their cries sharp against the low rumble of cargo wagons and the distant creak of ship rigging.
He had been here once before. Weeks ago, arriving from the eastern outpost with the Oni delegation. Still half dead from the wolf. Still learning what this world demanded of him. The city had seemed enormous then. A sprawling port that swallowed the horizon.
It still did.
