The scent of blood and cold pine was the new scent of home.
For six months, I had lived and breathed the rhythm of the Bloodmoon war camp. It was a brutal, honest rhythm, stripped of all artifice. Here, value was not determined by lineage or prophecy, but by the strength of your arm, the sharpness of your mind, and the steel in your spine. It was a currency I understood.
Caleb had been true to his word. I was given absolute authority over his medical corps. I tore down their outdated practices, built sterile surgical tents that defied the mud and filth, and drilled the healers with a relentless discipline they had never known. There were grumbles, challenges from old-timers who resented taking orders from a Silverwood exile. I broke them not with anger, but with cold, irrefutable results
