The transition from late autumn into the bitter depths of the Northern winter came not with a gentle frost, but with a relentless three-day gale that buried the Blackwood Citadel in four feet of powdery, wind-driven snow. The outer battlements gleamed like freshly cut bone under a sunless, pale gray sky. Below, in the vast lower courtyard, the daily life of the fortress proceeded not with panicked desperation, but with the quiet, rhythmic precision of a well-oiled war machine.
Granaries were filled to their iron-reinforced rafters with the seized Bloodmoon grain. Fuel stores were stacked high with dense, slow-burning ironwood logs from the newly secured timber mills. In the lower barracks, soldiers dined on full meat rations, their morale soaring even as the mountain passes froze solid.
