The war room fell silent after Rose’s command, but it wasn’t a silence of hesitation—it was the silence of mountains before a storm. The months ahead would forge the hearts of the willing, and break the weak.
A full moon had passed since that moment, and Ashfall Ridge loomed closer with each rising sun.
Training began the next day. Not in isolated circles of kin, but side by side—flesh and fire, claw and blade, magic and instinct. The castle’s outer fields were transformed into crucibles. Pyres for honing flame, earthen pits for hand-to-hand, skyborne duels for fliers, and deepened tunnels where the burrowers practiced skirmishing in the dark. The smell of sweat and magic hung heavy in the air.
Rose trained with them. She bled beside them. No title separated her from the hardship.
In t
