The War College stood apart from the city.
Not within Ashenveil's walls but beyond them — two kilometers east, past the Forge Quarter's outermost workshops, across a bridge over the drainage canal that marked the administrative boundary between "city" and "military." The separation was deliberate. The College trained people to fight, and fighting — real fighting, with blessed weapons and domain-enhanced combat arts — required space that the city couldn't afford to sacrifice and noise that the city didn't want to hear.
Ryn had heard the noise from the Academy courtyard. A low, arrhythmic percussion — not drums, not forge-hammers, something else. The sound of iron striking iron at speeds that exceeded normal human capability. The sound of combat arts being practiced.
