The morning of the anchor installation began in silence.
Not the silence of fear, nor of mourning—but of breath held. Of a kingdom standing at the edge of something vast, unspoken, and utterly irreversible.
The sun had not yet risen when the fires were lit.
From the obsidian terrace that overlooked the southern plateau, long chains of braziers flared one by one—lines of flame that stretched down to the base of the half-finished Academy. Their light cut through the mist like burning veins. Shadows leapt from scaffold to tower to parapet, and at the center of it all stood the altar—a silent monolith of stone and binding glyphs, carved from the bones of the land itself.
It had waited long enough.
