The city felt it before it saw it.
Not in any single dramatic moment, more like a slow accumulation, the kind of tension that builds in the air before a storm and makes everything quieter than it should be.
Vendors packed up earlier. Streets that were usually busy past midnight emptied before the last lanterns went out. Conversations in the bars ran shorter, and when they did happen, they circled back to the same topic eventually.
The beast tide was coming.
BranLeaf had been through this before. Many times. Over the decades it had developed a system for handling it, not a rough plan hammered together under pressure, but something refined through experience, adjusted and improved after every wave until it ran with the kind of precision that only comes from having failed enough times to know exactly what not to do.
At the top sat the council members of the Association branch, the ones who assessed the scale of the incoming tide and directed everything from there.
