Morning broke over the Wastes without ceremony or light. No golden dawn, no bird song. Just the low groan of wind scraping across dead land.
Above the Black Fall, the sky hung bruised and swollen — a mass of unmoving, sallow gray clouds that clung to the heavens like rot.
The air smelled of sulfur and old magic.
The ground, cracked like the flesh of something long dead, radiated a heatless dryness that clawed at the lungs.
Every road led here — to the great Gate that split the world like the blade of god.
Around the Gate, the camp had increased.
Hundreds had gathered, drawn by fate, greed, prophecy, or desperation.
Mercenaries with rough scars and teeth filed to points. Cultists daubed in ash and symbols too old for the tongues that spoke them.
Exiled nobles in cracked armor, bounty hunters with steel in their eyes, mad prophets whispering to the dust. And, perhaps most dangerously of all — hopefuls.
