The Highway that led from the fertile, sunlit basins of Oakhaven toward the Western frontier was not a road meant for the faint of heart.
As the Black Bastion rode deeper into the continent, the landscape underwent a geological transformation.
The soft clay and sprawling oak forests receded, replaced by towering, jagged crags of dark granite and vast, sweeping plains of coarse, wind-whipped scrub grass.
The sky here seemed too large, an immense, vaulted dome of deep, cold indigo that pressed down on the mortal travelers with the crushing weight of insignificance.
The winds that howled down from the distant, snow-capped Western peaks carried no scent of flowers; they smelled of raw ozone, crushed stone, and the faint, coppery tang of distant, unceasing border warfare.
This was the approach to the Iron Marches.
Inside the carriage, Seraphina had successfully constructed an entire paper ecosystem out of the Duke's administrative backlog.
