The wind did not wait for the departing march to vanish into the southern valley before it changed its voice.
A low, keening hum swept through Grim Hollow's battered stone corridors. Not the mourning whistle of earlier, not the breath of winter slipping through half-shuttered windows—no. This sound was the kind made by an outpost realizing it had been stripped down to its bones. The walls themselves felt colder. The open yards felt wider than they should. The courtyard echoed even when there was no footstep to make it echo.
The workers and fledglings were gone.
Only the fighters remained.
Sergeant Tyven's voice cracked through the morning frost.
"Keep moving! Stay tight! Don't break formation!"
The evacuation column snaked across the courtyard like a wavering spine. Workers lugged sacks or clutched children. Fledglings, half-trained and half-scared, stumbled through the snow under the weight of packs too large for their narrow shoulders.
