The Black Claw tower walls stood like grave sentries, woods shrouded in cloud and darkness. Halvar strode beneath the ancient bone archway, his hood low, the mark of exile concealed beneath plain leather. He carried no sword, but the weight of remembrance and the fire of something harder under his ribs—resolve or insanity, he could not tell.

The guards let him pass with scowling faces and stiff shoulders, one whispering into the other's ear before one sent a messenger up the hill to the high ...