The sun hung low, a blood-orange smear against the ashen sky, bleeding over rooftops like a warning. Lara's boots struck the cobblestones with rhythmic force, each step echoing authority she had not asked for but had chosen to wear. Dust clung to the folds of her cloak, the weight of the Dark Continent still lingering on her shoulders, even here—'especially' here.
Her entourage followed: two knights, armor battered and dulled by battle, one mages cloaked in midnight blues, two adventures and a scout whose eyes never stopped moving. They moved not as a parade, but as ghosts passing through a kingdom that had forgotten how to hope.
The town of Ember Hollow—once vibrant, loud, foul with life—was now a hushed ruin of panic. Merchants clumsily shuttered their stalls. Mothers whispered blessings over their children's hair. Men drank too early and too hard, muttering about kings who no longer spoke and princes who never returned.
