Chapter 55. Banners on the Wind

The rising sun found the fortress restless and wakeful, as though the stones themselves sensed what was coming.

Thin mist curled along the broken courtyards, swallowing shattered flagstones and battered carts where they lay. Scouts moved like shadows along the crumbling battlements, their cloaks snapping sharply in the cold breeze. On every wall and turret, newly stitched banners fluttered—black cloth embroidered hastily with a silver thorn-crowned wolf. Selene’s new standard, stark and unmistakable.

It was a declaration that the Broken Moon would no longer crawl through the ashes of defeat.

Inside the great hall, Selene leaned over a battered map spread across the ancient war-table, her palms braced against the splintered wood. Garron and Alaric flanked her, grim silhouettes beneath faded tapestries that told stories