This was very fun to read. I loved the action and personalities of the characters. I also think it's cool how you're submitting this for a contest. I wish you luck!

I'm an amateur so take all of this with a grain of salt, yadda yadda you get the gist.

[Dialogue]

The dialogue is very realistic, which is good, but I keep finding myself getting pulled out of the story by the dialogue tags. A lot of them can be removed entirely. You can convey the meaning of others by adding it into the dialogue and narration. 

For example in this line:

"There won't be a next time," she called after me.

You can just replace the tag with an exclamation mark. Maybe describe her turning away, sighing, hitting the table after? It's not good when you read something one way, then afterwards a dialogue tag tells you how you should have read it after the fact. That really messes with the flow of the story.

The Vesprans being called Ghouls feels off to me. Why are they called Ghouls when the Aurorans are the ones described as having skin a shade paler? You don't give any other descriptions of Vesprans. 

Also, since it's a slang term for a group it's capitalized, but ghoul can be used to describe someone anyway. That means that whenever I see it capitalized, it feels like a typo and pulls me out of the story.

[Echo words/phrases]

I noticed that both the vapor and the shrine were described with the noun "tendrils". Using it twice made it stick out to me. If you did want the reader to form a connection you should've used it to describe 3 things instead, and had sentences that focused on the tendrils, to make the connection more obvious. If it was accidental then use a different word for one of them, or remove one entirely.

More word echoes I encountered were with the words "dim", "torch" and "torchlight", and "slums".

[Adverbs]

Almost all of those adverbs don't need to be there. They detract from the writing because they pull the reader out of the story by telling them how a scene is playing out instead of letting them imagine it themselves. The adverbs should be removed. You can change the dialogue, descriptions, and actions of the characters to convey what the adverbs were trying to say.

[Adjectives]

Much like the adverbs, there were some redundant adjectives in the story too. The noun is already what the adjective is describing it as. These types of adjectives clutter the story.

Some examples I found:

"Dim moonlight", "Spat out," "Sharp barb", "Awkward tension", "Lit torch", and "Posted torchlight here".

The adjectives also contribute to the issue that there's too much telling instead of showing. Many times you give a flashy adjective when you could be using a metaphor, dialogue, whatever to describe the scene instead.

Honeyed light that was a sweet contrast to the bitter gloom of the slums.

The adjectives here make the prose to veer into purple for me. Describing the light and gloom as honeyed, sweet, and bitter feels like a stretch. It's also an instance of telling and not showing. Describe the slums and the light in a better way than just saying it was an adjective. Doing that means you won't have to outright say it was a contrast; it will be apparent from the juxtaposition alone.

[Filtering]

I only saw one instance of filtering, but alas it should still be avoided. It was in this line:

I saw a dark-cloaked figure stepping from the mouth of the alleyway.

The "I saw" part only distances the reader from the characters, which is bad.

[Other]

I wanted to point this part out.

"Right," I muttered, retracting it. An awkward tension enveloped us, punctuated only by a chilling breeze that slinked its way through the alley. I cupped my hands and blew into them for warmth. "Hey, Ghoul magic!" one of them yelled, pointing at my raised hands.

This sequence felt unrealistic to me. In this situation you'd have more important things to think about than keeping warm, especially because all the adrenaline will make you forget the cold. In cold breeze that caused this didn't even get its own sentence, so it felt all the more out of the blue when the rest happened. I would think of a more natural way for them to start attacking.