The shift happened without warning.
One moment, Sera and her men were crossing the threshold of the shattered council chamber, stepping over broken stone and scorched markings. The next, the world folded with a clean, disorienting snap, and they were standing inside the Sheriff's office as if they had never left it.
The door behind them was intact, the desk was whole, and even the windows showed the same dusty street below, frozen in its careful, old-world stillness.
The room smelled faintly of ink, leather, and authority that had never learned how to bend.
Sera stopped walking.
Ashkar stopped with her, close enough that the heat from his body pressed warm and steady against her back. Aerenyx's presence anchored her left side, quiet and lethal, while Psycho took three steps forward and smiled like he'd just been handed a gift all wrapped in a bow.
