The days following the council were unlike anything I had experienced in Frosthold.
The fortress, always bustling with activity, transformed into something else entirely—a hive of focused, urgent purpose. Warriors moved with new intensity, their faces set in grim determination. Smiths worked through the night, the clang of their hammers echoing off the stone walls without pause. Fletchers produced arrows by the thousand, their fingers bleeding from the endless work of binding feathers to shafts.
And through it all, a strange stillness settled over everything.
