The runway welcomed us with teeth.
Concrete stretched like a scar under a gray, unforgiving sky. Wind howled low and sharp, tugging at my coat and ringing the bells of my mask like an omen. The moment the plane's wheels kissed ground, I felt it—the shift. The silence. The eyes.
The Republic did not like visitors.
It tolerated intrusions the way a snake tolerates footsteps: with patience and poison.
We disembarked into the cold, unblinking eye of a nation pretending not to watch. I stepped off the plane first, violet boots flashing like heresy on the tarmac, and struck a pose so ridiculous I nearly twisted an ankle.
"Ah!" I cried, arms wide to the sky. "Bless this land of iron and frost! May your concrete dreams never thaw!"
Cameras clicked. Reporters in gray coats clustered behind flimsy barricades. Not all of them were real. Some, I suspected, hadn't written a word in years. Plainclothes agents stood among them like forgotten furniture—too stiff, too clean.
