The three-hundred-foot obsidian gatehouse of Iron Wall loomed like a sheer black cliff over the final staging yard.
Every traveler wishing to enter the Vermillion Empire had to funnel through the Customs Bastion: a heavily fortified courtyard enclosed by double portcullises of dark star-iron and flanked by three-tiered ballista platforms.
Above the arched entryway, three massive bronze rings hung suspended from the stone vault, spinning slowly on hidden gimbals as they projected interlocking spiritual detection arrays over the stone flags.
On both sides of the narrow inspection lane, imperial handlers in thick boiled-leather coats held heavy iron chains attached to four-eyed tracking hounds, whose flared nostrils tested the air for forbidden blood pacts, unrefined demonic marrow, or con
