Spring unfolded across the realm with a generosity that seemed almost deliberate, as though the earth itself were rejoicing alongside us. Everywhere one looked, life was returning in abundance: tender green shoots pushing through the warming soil, fruit trees bowing beneath cascades of blossom, and rivers running clear and bright, their waters singing as they tumbled down from the distant snow-capped peaks. The air held the sweet, heady scent of damp earth and blooming jasmine, carrying it on soft breezes that stirred the new leaves and whispered through the open windows of the great hall. There was a lightness to the days now—a sense that the long, bitter winter was truly ended, and that nothing of the darkness remained but memory and lesson.
I stood upon the eastern battlements at dawn,
