Medrias liked mornings.

  He hadn't always. There was a time — a long time ago, when mornings meant councils and correspondence.

  But that was then.

  Now mornings meant the walk.

  He left his apartment at seven forty-five, same as always. Down the three flights of stairs because the elevator was slow and he didn't mind the steps. The building was old yet alive with personality. The third step from the bottom had a creak that had been there since he moved in, and he stepped over it without thinking now.

  He walked and saw Pete was in the lobby.

  He was always in the lobby at this hour, crouched near the front door with a toolbox open beside him. Today he was fitting a new length of weatherstripping along the bottom frame, pressing it flat with two fingers.

  "Morning," Pete said.

  "Morning, Pete."

  "Elevator's running a little rough on the cable." He peeled back a corner of the stripping, repositioned it half an inch. "Might want to take the stairs today."

  "I always take the stairs."

  Pete made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. Medrias stepped past him and out into the morning.

  Mrs. Okafor was on the second floor landing, coat buttoned, bag over one shoulder, heading out for her shift at the hospital three blocks over. She smiled when she saw him coming up — then remembered he was going down, and laughed softly at herself and held the stairwell door anyway.

  "Good morning, dear."

  "Good morning, Mrs. Okafor."

  He passed her on the landing and continued down, and behind him he heard her humming something quiet to herself as she climbed.

  Outside, the city was alive with fervor. Garbage trucks grinding through their routes. Coffee carts rattling open. Medrias walked into all of it and felt, as he did most mornings, something in him settle.

  Sal's cart was on the corner of Fifth and Meridian. Sal was in the middle of handing off a cup when Medrias arrived, and without breaking the transaction or looking over, he had another cup waiting by the time Medrias reached the window.

  "Running late," Sal said.

  "I have a few minutes."

  "You always say that."

  Medrias paid, dropped a bill in the tip jar, and kept walking. He had thought, more than once, about asking Sal how he kept everything straight — the orders, the faces, the rhythms of a hundred different people every morning. He still hadn't asked. Some questions changed things when you said them out loud, and he liked this corner exactly as it was.

  He pulled out his phone somewhere around the third block.

  [HeroWatch — MEGATHREAD: Official Tier Rankings — Post-Dockside Update]

  [TowerGazer99: Stellarion is S tier and if you disagree you watched a different incident than the rest of us. The man moved a CRUISE SHIP.]

  [Nightwalker_fan: He had help from Watershed for like the first ten minutes.]

  [TowerGazer99: Watershed was unconscious for the last TWENTY MINUTES. It doesn't count.]

  [HeroMetrics: The ranking committee literally had to create a new performance subcategory after this incident. That's the conversation we should be having.]

  [HeroMetrics: Watershed deserves S tier or at minimum a formal S- classification and I will die on this hill. Her flood redirection during the Meridian bridge collapse alone. ALONE.]

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  [Brickwall88: She keeps declining the reclassification. She literally submitted a formal request asking them not to bump her.]

  [Nightwalker_fan: Why would you do that.]

  [QuietObserver: Some people just aren't built for the spotlight and I respect it honestly.]

  [TowerGazer99: THEN STOP MOVING FLOODWATER WITH YOUR MIND IN PUBLIC.]

  [ClearRateEnjoyer: Nobody is talking about Ironveil and that's embarrassing. Best incident clear rate in the city two years running. And I don't just mean the big stuff — guy shows up to street-level calls that other A tiers won't touch.]

  [Nightwalker_fan: Clear rate isn't everything.]

  [ClearRateEnjoyer: It kind of is though.]

  He scrolled further. A thread near the top had been bumped repeatedly through the night.

  [HeroWatch — DISCUSSION: Has anyone actually seen Captain Archmage DO anything??]

  [PowerScaler: The registration office won't release his classification because apparently he "filled out the forms in a non-standard format." What does that even mean.]

  [EastsideLocal: I was there for the Eastside thing last spring. Guy tried to snatch a purse, ran maybe fifteen feet, and just... fell. Witness said it looked like his own shoes turned on him.]

  [PowerScaler: So his power is making people trip. What a hero.]

  [ThinkAboutIt: OR that's just what it looks like when someone extremely powerful does something extremely small and keeps walking. You ever think about that.]

  [PowerScaler: ......I did not think about that.]

  Medrias put his phone away.

  The name had been Oryn's idea. Or maybe Serelith's — the memory had softened at the edges the way old things did. You're not just a mage, you're our mage. Our captain. Someone had laughed. Someone else had agreed, and then it had stuck.

  He had considered picking something different when he registered.

  He rounded the corner onto Fifth.

  There was a man that was walking behind a woman in a gray coat, closing the distance between them, then drifting back, then closing it again. His eyes didn't go to the shop windows or the people passing or anywhere else.

  Medrias took a sip of his coffee.

  The gap closed and the man snatched the purse and the woman stumbled and made a sharp sound that caused the pigeons on the ledge above to scatter.

  The man ran.

  Medrias said one word under his breath.

  [Stumble.]

  It was a working so small it barely registered as intent — it was best explained as a quiet nudge at the fabric of things, the kind that happened almost before you decided it.

  The man's feet went sideways. He hit the pavement hard, skidded, and then sat up blinking at his own shoelaces. The bag was still in his hand. The woman was already turning around.

  Medrias kept walking.

  He was almost at the end of the block when he heard a sound like a seam in the air being pulled tight. He didn't turn around.

  He already knew who it was.

  Behind him, someone said "don't move."

  Phones were coming out. A few people stepped back. Someone said "oh that's Ironveil" like they were recognizing a regular at a restaurant, and then a small ripple of phones pivoting toward the scene.

  Medrias turned the corner.

  He was still four minutes late.

  The office building was twelve stories of glass and a revolving door that caught on the left side every single time. He had mentioned it to building management twice.

  Rosario was at the front desk with a phone to her ear and a pen behind it and reading glasses pushed up on her forehead that she never seemed to use. She looked at him, then at the clock.

  She turned back to her call.

  "Henderson at eleven," she said into the phone, and then to him without a breath between: "Hargrove's already in the back."

  "Thank you, Rosario."

  She waved him through.

  Hargrove's office was always organized. Files were stacked across every flat surface in arrangements that had their own logic. A dying plant in the corner that had been dying since Medrias started there. A framed photo on the desk — his daughter at seven, gap-toothed, holding a fish she'd caught somewhere upstate.

  Hargrove was behind the desk, jacket on, pen in hand, reading something. He looked up.

  "The Hero Tower called again."

  Medrias sat down. "I know."

  "They're offering her a corner suite." Hargrove set the pen down. "Rosario said the stipend number had a lot of zeros."

  "Mm."

  Hargrove looked at him. Then he looked down at his notepad.

  "You filled out the registration forms in a weird way."

  Medrias glanced up. "Where did you hear that?"

  "HeroWatch."

  A pause. "The forum..?"

  "Rosario reads it on her lunch break." Hargrove leaned back. "Is it true?"

  "The forms had categories that didn't apply to me," Medrias explained.

  "So you made new ones," Hargrove pressed.

  "I added a supplementary sheet."

  Hargrove wrote something on his notepad. "And they accepted that?"

  "They flagged it for review."

  "And?"

  "And then they stopped asking questions."

  Hargrove put the pen down and looked at him for a moment. Outside, the hustle and bustle of Fifth Avenue was alive and well with buses, carts, and people threading between each other without looking.

  I like mornings, Medrias thought. I like that Sal has the coffee ready. I like that Mrs. Okafor holds the door for someone going the wrong direction. I like that Pete is always fixing something.

  I like things the way they are now.

  "Why do you keep the registration at all if you're not going to use the benefits?"

  Medrias looked out the window.

  "Because the forms exist for a reason," he said. "And I assure you, that reason is good."

  Hargrove held his gaze a beat. Then he reached across the desk and opened the Henderson file.

  "Alright," he said. "Let's get to work."