The city returns without permission.
It appears at dawn.
Not with light.
Not with sound.
Not with warning.
One moment the eastern horizon holds only fog and broken forest. The next, stone walls breathe their way into existence beneath the mist—slow, hesitant, as if the land itself is remembering something it was told to forget.
Towers materialize half-formed, edges shimmering like heat over water. Streets knit themselves together in fragile lines. A river bends abruptly where no river existed the night before.
Rowan is the first to see it from Blackthorne’s highest watch.
“There,” he breathes. “By the old ravine. That’s not terrain drift.”
Kael joins him, eyes narrowing.
“That’s a settlement.”
“But Heaven’s charts—”
“—don’t include it,” Kael finishes.
The shadow coils awake wi
