There was a tremor in the hills—low, resonant, ancient.
It rolled through the mountains like a living heartbeat, rattling the bones of the city beneath. The Leonidus banners, still tattered from the last siege, strained against their poles as the wind howled from the north.
Above, the sky was no longer night or day but something between—a storm of fire and fury, red and gold flames devouring the heavens.
Every citizen saw it. Every soldier paused. Even the sleeping turned their heads to the window to witness it: the birth of a new legend or the end of an old one.
The fire was not natural. It was alive, breathing, shaped by will and wrath.
Aros had opened his draconic wings—vast, black things that caught and scattered the stormlight.
His scales glistened like obsidian dipped in lightning, his eyes molten with rage. Across from him, Catherine had shed her mortal shell.
