The old quarry wall was where the fortress went to die.
Tucked into the blind shadow behind the secondary tower, it was a vertical scar of gray limestone, half-carved and abandoned decades ago when the mountain’s marrow proved too hard for the builders’ iron. The wind did not howl here; it whistled through the jagged drill-holes like a dying man rattling his throat.
The solstice blizzard had coated the sheer rock face in a thick, translucent sheet of ice that caught the distant, orange glow of the courtyard watch-fires, turning the basalt into a wall of frozen amber.
Selene leaned her forehead against the freezing stone, her eyes closed. The limestone was so cold it burned her skin, but the pain was a necessary static. It was the only thing that could drown out the phantom smell of the
