The dark veil of night had settled fully over the horizon when Damien slipped through the final line of forest brush just beyond Velthorne's outer perimeter.
The looming walls he'd seen from a distance now rose like giants before him—fifteen meters high and thick as mountain roots, the stone glowing faintly under the pale light of the twin moons.
He kept to the shadows, cloaked still by the residual magic of the shadow essence he'd consumed earlier. His presence was reduced to nothing more than a passing chill in the wind, a blur if someone looked too hard.
As he moved, his eyes drank in the grandness of Velthorne's entrance gates. They weren't merely reinforced iron—they were adorned. Engraved with the insignia of House Raegon: a twisted, rising black serpent coiled around a crimson lance.
"He really is a Lord." Damien murmured to himself
It was... extravagant.
Too extravagant for a place still called a "town."
