The fortress rose like a judgment from the sea.
Black stone bit into the cliff’s spine, its knife-edged buttresses catching the stormlight. Waves shouldered one another far below and exploded white against the rock, drowning even gull-cries beneath their constant roar. Within, the fortress held its breath: long corridors lined with old banners, braziers burning a smokeless blue, the echo of bootsteps swallowed before they could return.
At the heart of it lay the Hall of Crowns.
Seven thrones curved in a crescent beneath a ceiling ribbed with fossilized ribs of some ancient leviathan. Crystal veins ran through the vault like captured lightning. Between the thrones sprawled a round table of obsidian, its surface inlaid with maps made from hammered moonsilver—rivers traced as quicksilver t
