Chapter 55. Banners on the Wind

The rising sun found the fortress restless.

Thin mist curled along the broken courtyards, swallowing shattered flagstones and battered carts. Scouts moved like shadows along the crumbling battlements, their cloaks snapping 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.

A symbol 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 hands braced against the splintered wood. Garron and Alaric flanked her, grim shadows under the fading tapestries.

"Voren’s men have sent runners west," Garron said, voice rasping with the weight of years. "We do not yet know to whom."

"Or why," Alaric added, tapping a scarre