Adaranthe rose from the plains at dawn.
Gabriel saw it first as a dark mass against the horizon, too large to be a hill, too defined to be cloud. The road had been climbing for hours, gentle slopes that accumulated into elevation without announcement, and now the city sat ahead like something that had always been there.
Stone and smoke.
The details resolved slowly as he walked. Walls thick enough to hold back armies. Towers that broke the skyline in jagged clusters. Buildings pressed so close together they seemed to share the same foundation, rising in layers that blocked the sun before it could reach the streets below.
The city was large enough to feel indifferent to him.
The road grew crowded as morning stretched on.
