Lucian
Dawn broke gray and thin over Blackwood.
From the outside, the castle looked almost unchanged—stone walls, snow-dusted roofs, banners hanging still in the frozen air. Inside, it felt like a living thing that had just finished bleeding.
I moved through it on autopilot, one order flowing into the next.
In the south courtyard, scaffolding already climbed along a cracked outer wall. Wolves in work clothes hauled stone and timber, mortar steaming faintly in the cold as they patched the sections where they had hit hardest. Someone shouted for a brace; someone else cursed as a plank slipped.
“Get that beam secured before it shifts again,” I called, voice carrying without effort.
Heads turned. Backs straightened. Bill, the foreman—broad-shouldered, gray at the temples—gave me a quick
