SOREN
Frostspine did not greet us with the roar of rebellion, but with something far more unsettling. I had expected resistance to be a visible, jagged thing, the kind of frantic, bloody defiance I had dismantled in the southern provinces during the first weeks of the unrest. I expected barricades, shouted insults, and the clumsy desperation of a populace pushed to its brink.
Instead, I found the wrong kind of quiet.
The villages we passed were not abandoned in the way a place becomes after a long siege. They were recently emptied. Fires were still humming in the hearths, sending thin ribbons of smoke into the slate-gray sky. In one cottage, a loaf of bread sat mid-preparation on a floured table, the dough still supple, as if the baker had simply stepped out for a moment and forgotten the way back. Doors stood open, swinging on their hinges with a rhythmic, wooden creak that paced our march.
