Steel sang beneath a gray morning sky.
Hammers rang on iron. Torchlight hissed against wet stone. Lines of men and women filed through half-formed barracks, armor clinking, weapons being distributed by calloused hands.
Along the eastern camp's main path, the first banners of Esgard fluttered—black, with the sigil of a crown wrapped in broken chains.
New colors. New war.
The city had changed.
What had once been scattered mercenary camps and half-loyal noble guardlines was now an engine—grinding forward with purpose.
Seven thousand strong, and still swelling with each dusk. The first major wall was halfway done, its bones of blackened steel rising like jagged teeth from the ashen soil. Runes lined the base, etched in silver by Saan's arcane forgers.
But it wasn't the wall that caught the eye now. It was the people.
The army of Hollow Flame.
