The wind rolled down from the high hills like a judgment passed—dry and bitter, laced with ash.

  Duke Regon von Martz stood atop the frost-slicked walls of Dorcheim, the easternmost stronghold of the Empire, and watched the crawling line of survivors inch its way toward his gates. His cloak, black wool lined with red fox, hung still around his broad shoulders despite the gust. He had not moved for nearly an hour. Not since the first wagons had come into view. Not since the first distant bells had rung to announce the arrival of the desperate.

  Below, the road writhed like a wounded serpent—choked with refugees.

  Men with shattered armor, blood still drying on their hands. Women dragging sleds of bundled children through ruts too deep to see the wheels. Horses with ribs poking through hides like scaffold bars. Carts heavy with the dead. Whole families burned or broken, wrapped in stained banners or burial cloth, their faces gaunt with hunger.

  It was a slow funeral march. And Dorcheim was the tomb they were crawling toward.

  Beside him stood Captain Vastina—loyal, cold-eyed, wrapped in plate armor that bore the sigil of House Von Martz: three wolves rampant on a field of red stone. Her helm was tucked beneath one arm, her free hand resting on the pommel of her sword. The raven-black of her hair whipped lightly in the wind, but otherwise she stood still, her eyes locked on the incoming tide of ruin.

  “They come as if fleeing death itself,” she said at last.

  Regon did not answer.

  Instead, he studied the way the children clung to their mothers, the way the elders limped without shoes, the way the guards at the gates had begun to hesitate—because they too had seen war, and they recognized the look of those who had survived something unholy.

  The bastion had fallen. Even before he was told, he knew.

  He felt it in his bones.

  ?

  Among the crowd below, two new shadows pressed forward through the crush of bodies.

  Tasmin’s boots were cracked and caked in frozen mud. She leaned hard on her stave, half-limping, half-dragging her leg as they passed under the towering arch of Dorcheim’s inner gate. Her hair, once golden and thick, was now chopped unevenly, smeared with soot and ash. Beside her, Weylin grunted beneath the weight of a small ironwood chest strapped to his back. His clothes were ragged, but he still wore the medallion of the Order of St. Fereth—a faded circle of red flame.

  “Hells take me,” Weylin muttered, shielding his eyes as the sun hit the square. “It’s bigger than Blackreach.”

  “It’s not big enough,” Tasmin replied, her voice low.

  Weylin cast a glance at her. “You still think they’ll let us stay?”

  “No. But we’ll stay anyway.”

  They passed beneath a line of guard towers, flanked on all sides by armored men and drawn swords. The air smelled of sweat, steel, and fear. Behind them, another wagon pulled through—its rear axle shattered, dragging a trail of blood where a body had slipped loose and been forgotten.

  Weylin squinted upward, toward the figures atop the wall. “That him? Von Martz?”

  Tasmin followed his gaze. A black shape loomed against the sky, unmoving, like a shadow carved in stone. “Aye. That’s the man who held Feld run Ridge with just his army. He’ll hold this place too. He has to."

  “If the whole horde comes here, I don't think it's possible. What will we do?”

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  Tasmin’s lip twitched. “Then we die with a blade in hand.”

  They kept walking, disappearing into the crowd of the newly damned.

  Behind them, the bells of Dorcheim tolled noon. Hollow and slow, as if unsure whether they marked a beginning or an end.

  A young soldier came pounding up the stone stairs. Sweat streamed down his neck despite the cold, and he bore a sealed letter clutched so tightly it might’ve torn in his grip. Without ceremony, he thrust it toward Vastina and saluted, fists clanging against his cuirass.

  She broke the seal. Scanned it. Said nothing.

  Then she dismissed the messenger with a nod and walked to stand beside Regon once more. Her silence told him everything before she spoke.

  “Well,” he said quietly. “What is it? Tell me.”

  “It is as you feared, my lord,” she said. “Blackreach has fallen. General Casamir is dead.”

  The words hung in the air like ice.

  “A great green skin incursion has swept out of the Dak Mar swamps. They occupy the bastion now. The survivors have fled in all directions. This,” she nodded toward the road, “is but a fraction.”

  Regon let out a slow breath. His eyes did not leave the horizon. “Casamir…”

  He’d known him since boyhood. Fought beside him in the Brothers’ War when Dorcheim had stood alone against the eastern rebellion, and the emperor—then just a commander named Gregor Willinghelm—had been off chasing ghosts in the west.

  Casamir Saumont had held Blackreach for twenty years. The Lion. His very name had held the border. And now he was gone.

  “How can that be possible…” Regon whispered. “He was the best of us.”

  “I’m sorry, my lord,” Vastina said, quieter still.

  A silence fell between them.

  Then, hesitantly: “There is another matter.”

  Regon turned, one brow raised.

  “I fear we do not have the supplies to feed all these people. Winter is already kissing the hills. If the snows come early… we’ll bleed dry.”

  “What would you have me do?” Regon asked sharply, eyes narrowing. “Turn them away? Close the gates? Let them die in the snow?”

  “No, my lord, I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you meant, Captain.” He exhaled through his nose. “And you’re not wrong. But we are not wolves to eat our own.”

  She bowed her head. “Of course.”

  Below them, the gates groaned as another wave of survivors was admitted. One of the guards—a boy Regon vaguely remembered sparring with in the courtyard—knelt beside a collapsed woman. She wasn’t moving. A child clung to her chest, weeping into the folds of her burned dress.

  Regon’s jaw tensed.

  “If they can defeat Casamir and take the bastion,” he said, “then they pose a considerable threat to us.”

  “Yes,” Vastina agreed. “We are the next nearest city.”

  “No,” he corrected. “We are the last before the high pass.”

  He said nothing for a long time after that. Then finally:

  “Recall the villagers and farmers outside the city. Bring them within the walls. If they linger, they die.”

  “Understood.”

  “And call up the militia. Everyone. Blacksmiths. Drunkards. Minstrels. If they can lift a blade, they are now under arms.”

  She nodded.

  “Double the training hours for the city guard,” he continued. “Quadruple the night watch. Arm the towers with every ballista we have. Order the Masons’ Guild to begin reinforcing the east wall.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  She turned to go, but he raised a hand.

  “And Captain…” he said.

  She stopped.

  “Send word to the emperor.”

  He said the last word like one might say the name of a snake.

  Vastina’s brow twitched. “Shall I request supplies?”

  Regon’s mouth curled into a grim smile.

  “Request?” he said, bitter. “No. Let him be informed. Let him know that Casamir is dead. Let him know that the east is broken and that I—Regon of Dorcheim, Duke of the Red Hills, Warden of the Pass—still hold. But I will not beg.”

  “My lord,” Vastina said gently. “We may need his aid.”

  He turned toward her slowly.

  “The last time I needed the emperor’s aid,” he said, “was during the siege of Feld run Ridge. We bled for three weeks—my own son among the dead. Gregor sent no banners. He sent no food. No gold. Not even a raven. When the siege broke, he had the gall to send me a medal and ask for taxes in the same letter.”

  Vastina said nothing.

  Regon’s eyes were like frozen coals now.

  “We bled while he sat in Struttsburg dining with foreign queens and congratulating himself on a unified realm. Unified by whose sacrifice, I ask you?”

  He turned away again.

  “I’ll not bend the knee again. If the Empire wants this city to stand, let it prove it with men, with grain, with steel. I will not trade my pride for platitudes.”

  Vastina bowed again, slower this time. “As you command, my lord.”

  She descended into the city, already shouting orders to the watch.

  Regon remained.

  The wind howled against the crenellations. The first snowflake drifted from the greying sky, landing like a kiss on his sleeve. It was thin and soft—but it heralded a storm.

  Dorcheim had stood for six hundred years. Through rebellions, through betrayals, through a dozen emperors and one mad pretender. It had stood because men like Regon von Martz refused to yield.

  But the green skins did not want surrender.

  They wanted slaughter.

  He watched the road until the sun dipped behind the eastern ridge and the entire valley fell into shadow. In the distance, he thought he could hear drums.

  And below, in the city he could not leave, he saw great sorrow.