Echoes of Ruin

The sun no longer rose over Aetherhold. It bled.

Twisted and red as a dying god's eye, the sky cracked open with dawn's arrival, spilling an ominous light over the frost-choked ruins. Smoke still curled from broken stone. Fire flickered in collapsed chambers where ice had once ruled with silent majesty. The great citadel—bastion of the north, fortress of legends—lay shattered, its bones picked clean by grief and ruin. What remained of Aetherhold was not a city, but a graveyard.

Selena stood atop the fallen eastern tower, what little remained of it, her figure a silhouette against the frozen horizon. Her cloak, dark and tattered, fluttered in the bitter wind like a mourning banner. Snow clung to the ends of her braid, and the blood on her leathers had long since frozen into stiff, dark stains. Beneath her, the ravaged plain stretched endlessly, strewn with wreckage, ash, and the corpses of those who had died fighting for her cause. For his cause.