shadows

42

The wall still quivered beneath Emil’s boots when the first bell began to toll.

It was a dull, iron-throated sound that rolled through the night like thunder. Once, twice, three times—the measured rhythm of a signal not for drills, not for exercises, but for war. The kind of sound that had not been struck in the citadel in decades.

Emil’s stomach clenched. His hands tightened around the shaft of his spear until his knuckles ached. The torches guttering along the parapet flared as though the bell’s voice had breathed fire into them, their flames stretching long, throwing shadows that seemed to twitch unnaturally against the stone.

From the forest came silence. The trees still swayed, but their whispering had stilled, as if the very wind was listening. The whisper in Emil’s own skull hush