Tidewatch held on the twenty-second day of the war because its defenders understood something that Sylvaen's forces did not: a harbor was not a piece of geography. It was a relationship.
The city sat where the Pale River met the western sea — a natural port that the kingdom's engineers had spent 180 years converting from a fishing village into the Sovereign Dominion's primary maritime gateway. Stone breakwaters channeled the harbor's mouth into a 400-meter opening. A chain boom could seal it in seven minutes. Defensive towers flanked the entrance, each equipped with ballista platforms and observation posts that gave the garrison complete visual coverage of the approaches. Behind the harbor, the city climbed the coastal bluffs in terraced construction — warehouses at the waterline, residential districts above, the temple of the Grand Ordinator at the summit, its spire visible from twenty kilometers out on clear days.
