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At the crown of Avelon's Great Spire, a practiced linewalker must climb, splice, and lace a failing anchor to save the Lower Quarter from isolation. The city—steeped in trade smells, lantern-lit terraces, and improbable rituals—holds its breath as technical skill, quick improvisation, and human trust decide the night.
Avelon hung itself along the wind like a cluster of bells: terraces stacked in crooked tiers, sash-cloth banners catching currents, skyways threaded from one leaning balcony to the next. Ropes braided the city into routes that smelled of boiled root and chamomile steam; merchants braided herbs into little gust-charm sachets and sold them from racks that clung to the railings. The Great Spire dominated the geometry, a stone column crowned in ironwork that took the city's weight and promised it would not tip into the rift. Tess Calder lashed the last strap of her harness beneath a pale sun. Her hands were precise and quick, working leather and rope as if tuning an instrument. She ran the pads of her fingers over knots out of habit: a fisherman's hitch, a chestline bend, the tidy loop she always left by the hip for an unexpected catch.
Her morning was a ritual of motion. She launched herself from the rim of Marello Terrace, knees folding, feet finding the taut line with a practiced click. Her boots left little sound; the lines hummed under her weight. From above, terraces shifted in slow bustling: breadfires sending smoke fingers into the air, a woman shaking dew from lettuce into a basin, children playing a game where they threw pebbles into pulley buckets and bet on whether they would land in the vendor's hat. Tess threaded a passerby’s brazen bell with an easy hand—a small kindness—and swung toward the midline anchor. The city smelled of toasted root and something sweeter, a pastry vendor's early batch calling to anyone with a craving and a head for heights. She had no time for a bun but her stomach noticed.
A gull-like bird—more ribbon-feather than avian—shoved its beak into her pack and emerged wearing, absurdly, the vendor's knitted cap. It bobbed and negotiated air like it owned the morning. Tess barked a laugh, hooked the bird with a gloved finger, and set it free; it flapped off, cap askew. Even in danger, Avelon kept its absurdities. At the midline anchor, the metal ring winked with salt-swept gloss from last night's condensation harvest, and Tess felt the soft, small comfort of familiar work: a visual check, a finger along the bolt, a listening for micro-grind that would tell her if the anchor had a secret about to unfurl.