The Iron Serpent cut northward through charred valleys and silent towns. No fanfare followed it now, only the hum of its engine and the clatter of steel wheels over reinforced track. Every town they passed bore some scar—church bells silenced, noble estates repurposed, crops planted not by landowners but by brigades. Behind them, Aragon's revolution crept outward like heat from a buried flame.
Ahead of them lay Barcelona.
The city had long stood apart—wealthy, cosmopolitan, devout, and proud. It had not welcomed royalist crusades, nor embraced republican uprisings. It endured. It watched. It traded. And now it waited, uncertain whether to resist or receive the oncoming force of progress.
