In the month following the return of the Company of the Serpent's Tooth, Aethelburg transformed. The city, which had been slowly decaying under a blanket of fear, was now a hive of frantic, purposeful activity. The King's proclamation and the heroes' return had not brought peace, but they had brought something far more valuable: a clear and defined enemy.
From his new, humble position as an assistant to the Magister, Titus witnessed this transformation firsthand. His daily errands took him on a winding path through a city being reforged in the fires of a new kind of war. The great plazas, once home to fearful prayer circles, were now muddy training grounds where General Kyrus's drill sergeants barked orders at the new recruits of the Civil Defense Force. The old naval archives near the riverfront had been commandeered, and from within, Titus could hear the confident, commanding voice of the sailor, Finnian, teaching young men and women how to navigate by the wind and the currents, a new generation learning to sail a world without stars.
The entire city had a grim, determined energy. Every blacksmith was at their forge, hammering out swords and shield rims. Every stonemason, including the quiet man named Orin, was reinforcing the city's walls. Aethelburg was no longer a city waiting to die; it was a fortress preparing for a siege.
Titus's destination, and the new heart of this burgeoning war effort, was the Lyceum of Human Resilience. Housed in the grand, repurposed Great Hall of Guilds, it was a place of organized, chaotic innovation. It was nothing like the silent, reverent halls of the Great Observatory where he had grown up. The Lyceum was loud, filled with the sounds of debate, the scratching of quills, and the scent of strange herbal concoctions.
He found Praxus, the Magister, in the center of it all. The scholar was no longer a haunted wanderer. He was a general in his own right, commanding an army of scribes, engineers, and thinkers. He stood over a massive table covered in reports from across the continent, directing his forces in the War of Knowledge.
"The reports of Ashen in the Verdant Reach show a pack-hunting behavior we haven't seen in the south," Praxus was saying to a cartographer. "Mark their locations and cross-reference them with any known Progenitor sites in the region. There may be a connection."
Titus saw Hanna in the adjoining chamber, which had been converted into a massive alchemical workshop and infirmary. She was overseeing the cultivation of Kingsblood moss in specially designed, climate-controlled greenhouses, and instructing a new corps of healers on how to treat the unnatural wounds inflicted by the Ashen. She was the calm, compassionate heart of this new science of survival.
Even High Priest Theron was here. He was a quiet, spectral figure, his face etched with a permanent sorrow, but he worked with a tireless diligence. He used his encyclopedic knowledge of the Observatory's archives to find any text, no matter how obscure, that might aid Praxus's research. He was a ghost of the old world, dutifully helping to build the new one.
"Magister," Titus said, handing a scroll to Praxus. "A new report from a patrol in the Sunstone March. The late Duke Gareth's son has declared his allegiance to a council of southern lords, and they are refusing to answer the King's Great Summons."
Praxus sighed, the news another weight on his already burdened shoulders. "Another voice choosing discord over harmony," he muttered, placing the scroll onto a growing pile marked 'Internal Threats.'
Their work was interrupted by the sharp, metallic sound of armored boots. Commander Eva entered the Lyceum, her presence cutting through the scholarly chaos. Two of her guards dragged a captured, snarling Covenanter between them.
"Magister," Eva said, her tone all business. "We caught this one trying to poison a well in the sanctuary district. I need to know if he's acting alone or if it's a coordinated attack."
The captured man spat on the floor. "The Voice of the Tyrant will feast on your bones, heretics!"
It was a stark reminder that while they were building and planning, the internal war in the city's alleys and sewers was still being fought. As Eva dragged the prisoner away for interrogation, another figure arrived: a Royal Herald, his tabard bearing the King's sigil.
"Magister Praxus," the Herald announced. "A message from the King. The first foreign delegation has arrived in Aethelburg for a preliminary meeting before the Council of the Sundered Sky. It is the High Chieftain of Clan Stonehand, from the mountain kingdom of Karak. He is… uncooperative."
Praxus nodded wearily. The great, chaotic, and likely hostile chorus of humanity was beginning to gather.
As dusk fell, Titus was finally dismissed. He walked through the city, his mind reeling from the day's immense pressures, political rebellion, internal terrorism, and the looming diplomatic nightmare of the Council. His path took him past one of the fortified Houses of Defiance. The gates were open, and the courtyard was filled with a diverse crowd of the city's new inhabitants: soldiers of the guard, recruits of the civil defense, sailors from Finnian's college, and dozens of refugee families who had fled the increasingly dangerous countryside.
A storyteller was just finishing a tale in the center of the yard. A profound, weary silence settled over the crowd. Then, a single, clear voice, a woman he recognized as one of Hanna's healers, began to sing. It was not a battle hymn or a grand anthem. It was a simple, sad, and achingly beautiful folk song from the Age of Grace, a lament for a lost summer.
For a moment, she sang alone. Then, an old sailor, his face a roadmap of grief, began to hum along. A young soldier, her face still bruised from a training spar, quietly joined in with the words. Soon, from all corners of the courtyard, more voices joined the melody. It was not a performance; it was a shared, spontaneous breath of sorrow and memory. The quiet, powerful, and deeply melancholic chorus rose into the twilight, a fragile sound in a world of monsters and tyrants.
Titus stopped, leaning against a cold stone wall, and just listened. He, a man raised in the solitary, silent reverence of the Observatory, a place of singular truths, finally and completely understood what Praxus meant by the Chorus.
It was not a weapon to be forged or a magic to be found. It was this. The simple, unbreakable act of a community sharing its grief and its endurance through a single, sad song. It was the one thing the Carver of Silence, in his perfect, monolithic order, could never create and would never comprehend.
He looked at the faces in the courtyard, illuminated by the warm lamplight, the soldier, the sailor, the healer, the farmer, all singing together in the dark. They did not have the First Magic yet. They did not have a grand alliance. But they had this.
And for now, Praxus was right. It was enough.
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The Chronicle of the Fallen
Time Period Covered: Approximately Days 301 through 330 of the Age of Fear
Victims of The Reaping: 9
Victims of the Covenant: 255 (The Covenanter ideology is now a fully-fledged rival religion in Zahram and is the spark for the rebellion in Aethel's Sunstone March)
Deaths from Ashen Attacks: 480
Deaths from Civil Unrest: 77
Total Lives Lost: 821
Of Note Among the Fallen:
— The last master bridge-builder in Aethel, whose family had maintained the kingdom's infrastructure for centuries, killed in a Covenanter raid on his work camp.
— An entire hunting party from a prominent clan in Karak, wiped out by an unnaturally intelligent pack of Ashen wolves.