Temp-Hardi

Leaving the salt-marshes, you arrive at Temp-Hardi, a city built not on foundations but on facades. One finds entire plazas being resurfaced in hammered copper sheeting; tenement blocks receiving new faces of grey vellum; public squares paved overnight with tiles of uncanny geometry, as if a game-board had been made into a landscape. The air carries the fine, gritty dust of ground-down stone and the sharp scent of cut metal.

The city's plans are drafted not on large scrolls but on small, intricate cards, traded among the artisans in quiet taverns. These designs are first tested on miniature wooden blocks and paper squares before they are applied to the city itself.

You will search for the city's ruler, but you will not find him on a throne. You find him instead in the fleeting reflection on a sheet of polished slate, in the architect's curve of a newly-arched doorway, in the signature on the back of a playing card. The city is his portrait, and it is always being repainted.