The dreams and hopes of a lost people slowly flutter away, both watching the formations of smoke drifting into the darkened sky above.

On Eighth Avenue, the bustle of citizens falls from its second daily apex; commuters long returning to homes from factories and service centers through cable cars and sidewalks. Across roads the brilliant illumination from arcane lamps overturns the coloring of nearby commercial facing facades, a sleepless city always awake.

Anipurin’s Bakery closed for the day as the extended family returns upstairs to the attached apartment for a group dinner, its counterpart in the Law Offices of Anipurin & Cato & Karpov however still open in another brutal overnight case review. The next door signage of Love and Joy in the Pleasures of Work remains on, a laundromat never technically closing against the bustle of the avenue. Even now, within the caged windows, a handful of customers watch as dirty clothing is washed by arcane machines; a patience extended as entertainment is derived from the near hypnotic tumbling of cloth within spinning machinery. At this hour of the night, Arni’s Own remains nearly full; cheese and tomato and dough consumed by a population of both starving drunks and late-working businessmen. Food satisfying the thirst for warmth on a rainy day, slices bought with copper pieces as an owner laughs alongside his customer base in the unification of good food.

In the 8th Precinct’s Headquarters Building the shift change completes; the tired forms bidding best wishes to fresh replacements. A graveyard hour beginning at the end of a workday, the precinct’s operational period irrelevant against time.

There’s a pause, Chief Grunsen listening as the clock on the far wall of the Arcane Crimes Unit Headquarters rings forth another hour passed. Realizing the lateness of the evening, a centered mind simply acknowledges both the time and her duty; returning to work as her unit remains out in the killing fields of South.

In Midtown, a home remains silent. A dinner uncooked, a child unfound, a family instead reuniting in the cold interrogation room of Precinct Fourteen’s Headquarters. Tears falling as parentage holds their own flesh and blood, the ravages of criminality finally coming to haunt the young accused soul as across the table a single gnome lawyer awkwardly holds her gaze towards the far wall. A private defense awaiting more evidence before proceeding, a quick recheck of legal briefs adding atop procedures of the justice system.

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It continues to rain, the high pressure pump of the bay sending forth a massive wall of humid air skyward as the Resolochev mountain range rejects the proceedings of the northern tradewinds. An argument between two natural powers; divorcing screams expressed through massive temperature shifts and high pressure zones. The Azure Sea sets fire to it all, the brunt of the humid front enhanced further with warm waters cycled in from the distant coast of Aiagon. A meteorological pattern sudden and unpredictable, weather divination stations careening away from an expected clearance of clouds for the coming week and now instead focused upon the developing storm about to smash into the southern coast of Arune.

The temperature hits its critical point; a barometric pressure plummeting alongside the development of an incoming storm annihilating the last hopes of a good weekend ahead. Coldness sends a chill down the entire city’s spine as the axial tilt of the world finally confirms the early arrival of winter; unbriefed weather patterns accelerating the shifting of the seasons to a frigid few months ahead.

In Tideson the family of three gathers itself for dinner, missing but a single soul.

In a home filled with trophies of slain monsters and old personal weapons from an era of adventure beyond the great city, the scent of homely food is placed upon noses. A brilliance of culinary development from the secret passions coming to the surface of new life, a second developed career of food laboratories derived from a retired profession of silver, steel, and monsters.

Pictures of the family are displayed upon the credenza facing the dinner table; the black and white photos of a mixed child of two bloodlines slowly grows alongside the passage of time. At first beaming with youthful innocence in his early years, the tusked grin slowly tapers towards a more calm, colder smile upon the well built form.

He raises the question first, a deep concern for the safety of his child spoken towards the partner. A scoff as she notes his substantial anxiety, a dismissal of the words as she assures him of their son’s abilities.

If you only knew how bad it was.

The two uniformed personnel take in the ambience of South, an unspoken conversation left to the metropolis as they just stare at the officers, at the crowds, at the evidence, at the lights, at the city.