The heavy wool coat weighs down Ryan's shoulders, its thick fabric feeling entirely unsuited for the damp, maritime fog curling around the historic street corner. Standing directly in his path, the nervous local magistrate taps an ink-stained finger against his wooden clipboard and barks out a renewed demand for Ryan's immediate travel permit, his voice carrying the brittle, uncompromising urgency of a compliance officer auditing an expired building pass.
Ryan offers a slow, gravelly exhale, shifting the heavy strap of his canvas messenger bag as the coarse wool garment strains slightly across his chest. With the deadpan, unimpressed patience of a marketing coordinator trying to explain a routine logistics delay to an overzealous security guard, he begins patting down his coat pockets. He treats the feudal checkpoint with the exact same mechanical resignation he usually reserves for an unbudgeted facilities audit, hoping to locate the stamped parchment and clear this administrative bottleneck before his morning transit connection dissolves entirely into the mist.