Chapter 31. Fireborne Oaths

They fashioned the circle stone by hand, each boulder coaxed into place by fingers and grit rather than hauled by winch or pulley. The dusk air was thick with dust motes that drifted like ghosts in the torchlight, and the courtyard beneath the crumbling battlements took on an otherworldly haze. Sweat ran in rivulets down their backs, stung their eyes, and slicked their palms so that every grain of earth clung to them like a curse. No one dared spring the stones with iron clamps—this was a rite of blood and bone, and the slow burn of effort mattered more than any mechanical advantage. Each rock scraped against the hard-packed clay floor with a low groan, muscles coiling in the men and women who guided them. The taste of metal lingered on their tongues, mingling with the parched dryness of the wind.

At the heart of the circle they dug the pit in near silence. A solitary spade bit into the limestone cap, its dull ring swallowed by a shared hush of concentration. The faint echo of