Night laid its silver cloak across the war-camp, hemming lantern light into trembling pockets and turning every tree to a charcoal sketch. Mist drifted between the tents like pale serpents, coiling around spear-points and muting the clink of armor. Even the waterfall, ever a thunderous sentinel beyond the ridge, hushed its roar to a stone-deep murmur—as though some instinct warned it to listen.
Princess Vaelira Greenbark stood just beyond the furthest cook-fire, where heat faded and dew gathered. Her moss-iron cuirass seemed forged for moonlight; each leaf-molded scale caught the glow and released it in thin, glimmering veins. She rested a gauntleted hand on the pommel of her leaf-steel sword, feeling the faint throb of ancestral runes beneath her fingertips. They matched the rhythm in her chest—steady, deliberate, but uneasy.
