The meeting place was a dead plaza at the edge of Umbral's commercial district, far from the prying eyes of House agents and the magical recordings that monitored every public space. Adrian had chosen well: isolated, defensible, and completely off the grid, and Dante arrived alone as requested.
The plaza was circular, ringed by abandoned shops whose owners left when the area's trade routes dried up decades ago. Bio-luminescent moss crawled up the walls and cast everything in shades of blue and green, and thick purple mist pooled ankle-deep across the cracked stone floor, muffling every footstep into silence.
Adrian stood in the center, hands clasped behind his back, looking like he was waiting for a business meeting instead of something that would destroy one of them.
"You actually came alone." Adrian's voice carried perfectly in the dead air. "I wasn't sure you would. Your team seems rather attached to you."
