The smoke hadn't cleared from the funeral pyres when they came.

Azrael stood on the cracked balcony, watching the ash spiral upward into the pre-dawn sky. Four bodies reduced to embers. Thirty refugees vanished into the city's uncertain mercy. His Dominion felt smaller somehow, the walls pressing inward with each loss.

Movement caught his eye—figures approaching the eastern barrier. Not the rushed, desperate flight of refugees, but the measured stride of those who'd made their choice ...