In the Kingdom of Sulkar, the wind did not blow—it shredded. It cut like invisible razors, stripping fresh snow from the bck stone walls and making the bearskin banners snap like whips.

  The warlord Gael, at forty-five, was less a man and more an extension of that fortress. Standing six-foot-one, with shoulders that seemed carved to carry gates, he walked with the deliberate slowness of someone who knows every stone of the rampart. His rugged body was not made of fat, but of muscle compacted by decades under mail, marked not by age, but by the active wear of war.

  His skin, pale as dirty snow, had the texture of cold-tanned leather. His eyes, a blue so pale they almost seemed gray, did not reflect the sky—they refracted it, cold and impenetrable. His hair, a blonde scorched by the sun of other nds, was tied back in a tight ponytail, kept not for vanity, but for the brutal practicality of keeping it out of his face during combat.

  Under his boiled leather gambeson—darkened by sweat and grease—and the mismatched iron ptes protecting his chest and shoulders (more repairs than dress armor), he carried his true mark. In the center of his chest, below the left colrbone, was a scar shaped like a sunken, burnt spiderweb. It wasn't from a bde. It was the signature of a pot of boiling oil that had exploded in front of him on the Pins of Lorsab, back when he was still an infantry general serving a lord he no longer remembered. That scar throbbed when the weather changed—a physical reminder of why he had chosen Sulkar: a pce where the only thing that burned was the wood in the hearth.

  He had married Lira of Catarón, daughter of the legendary Albrecht. No one within those walls called her "princess." She was the Lady of Sulkar, and their marriage was no fairy tale, but the interlocking of two pieces of the same defensive puzzle: the mountain bde of Sulkar engaged with the naval and magical power of Catarón. A silent alliance, maintained by dry letters and the cold calcution that one needed the other not to be swallowed whole.

  The sword at his waist was no jewel. It was a heavy tool, its walnut hilt so worn by his fingers that the kill-notches—three lines for campaigns, nine marks for command duels—had almost vanished.

  The sound of boots slipping on packed snow made him stop. A soldier, a d with a wind-burned face but still without the scar in his eyes, scrambled up the steps. He stopped, panting, his breath coming in ghostly puffs.

  “My Lord!” the young man’s voice cracked between urgency and respect. “Scouts. To the east, at the foot of Ghost Valley. Coming from the scorched nds of Paranaldur. A dozen, maybe. Lightly armed, but… with crossbows.”

  Gael did not turn immediately. His gaze remained fixed on the horizon, as if he could see the footprints in the snow miles away. For a second, only the howl of the wind filled the space between them. Then, he turned. The movement was not fast, but it had the inevitability of a cell door being closed.

  “Keep the fort in active silence,” his voice was low, but it cut through the wind like an axe. “Double the shifts at the blind spots. And tell your men…” He paused, his ice-blue eyes piercing the young soldier. “…that if any of them step on our snow, don't let the cold be the only thing that kills them. Bring me their ears. I want to count them.”

  The soldier swallowed hard, struck his fist against his chest—a gesture more of relief for having survived the report than of formality—and disappeared down the stairs.

  Gael looked back at the horizon. The wind howled louder now, wrapping itself around his cloak.

  War had not yet knocked on his gates. But he could already smell it in the air—a mixture of iron, distant sweat, and snow about to be stained red.

  PauloFabricio

  https:///fiction/155420/domvoro