In the deep chamber carved into the living rock of Bastion Vrael, Altan stood in silence, the last hum of his cultivation fading as his steward approached. The scroll in the man's hand bore only a brief line, scrawled with unmistakable force.
"The Southern Kingdoms are ours. —C"
Altan turned from the meditation dais and summoned Daalo, the Chief Engineer and Master Craftsman of the Stormguard, along with his young apprentice. When they arrived, he spread out a blueprint on the obsidian table beside the chasm.
"You'll leave for the south," Altan said.
At the mouth of the great river flowing from Tempest Lake, where the waters emptied into the southern sea, a new naval base was to be built. The location had already been surveyed; the land was fertile, the coast deep enough for triremes, and the cliffs defensible. But stone had yet to be laid.
Now, the region needed more than a port.
It needed a beating heart.
Altan pointed at the blueprint, outlining the vision of an entire city that would rise along the riverbanks. A harbor would be dredged and lined with docks. Security walls would enclose both the naval base and the city center. Watchtowers and sea barriers would ring the southern shore.
At the city's core would stand the Stormguard Bastion, a fortress meant to anchor both command and legacy. It would be a new center of southern strength, projecting Altan's reach across the waves.
The city would be called the Freedmen Realm.
Daalo nodded once, eyes sharp. He understood the weight.
Altan's orders continued. He asked for a progress report on the naval ships being constructed at Vrael Gate. Daalo replied that twenty triremes had been completed. Altan did not flinch.
"Not enough," he said. "Seventy. Within five months. Assign a new naval architect to oversee the shipbuilding here. You'll go south. Double the craftsmen. Hire from the shipwright clans along the coastal cities. I'll have the steward release the funds tonight."
The apprentice, silent until now, was given a separate task. Her name was Selune, apprentice to Daalo, the Chief Engineer and Master Craftsman of the Stormguard. For five years she had studied under him, first in the drydocks of Bastion, then in the forges and stone yards along the southern coast. She was quiet, exacting, and had earned a reputation for building what others only sketched. This would be her first commission without him at her side.
Altan unrolled the blueprint across the table, an outline of the island's future. Not just a dockyard or naval outpost, but something larger. Inns and taverns would rise along the lower tiers, some simple and practical, others built for those with coin to spare. Lodges for foreign delegates, trade envoys, and coastal leaders were marked higher up, each with direct access to the main roads and the harbor.
At the center of the island stood the arenas. Two distinct spaces. One for formal games, tournaments, martial displays, contests of strength and martial form. And beside it, the Grand Arena, larger, enclosed, built for spectacle. Gladiators would fight there. No banners. No ranks. Just blood, discipline, and the crowd. It would draw coin, settle feuds, and remind all who came of the cost of strength.
The Seaborne Crown was never meant to preserve the past. It was built to shape what came next. Selune would stay behind and see it through. Altan gave no long speech, just a final look at the map and a single instruction:
"Build it. Make sure they see it from every ship that passes."
Altan set the first map aside and unrolled a second, sharper in design. It showed the landfill island west of the Seaborne Crown, newly raised near the mouth of the Vrael Canal, where stone and silt had been dredged to form solid ground. Its shape was rugged, functional, surrounded by water but anchored by intent.
"This is the other half," Altan said. "No festivals. No banners. This one's for war."
Selune leaned closer. The island's western flank was layered with docks, tiered to catch wind and current. From here, Stormguard ships could sail out within minutes if sails were spotted on the horizon. The docks faced the open Sarthalun Sea, beyond the Crescent border.
He pointed inland. "Here. Barracks. Enough for a full cohort. The Stormguard will drill here, yards to the north, sparring pits, weapon halls. Below that, supply depots and repair bays. We'll stack the armories tight. No frills. Only what's needed to sail, fight, and hold."
Then, at the island's center, Altan tapped a red-marked hexagonal structure.
"A tower. Not just a lighthouse, but a fortress. Reinforced walls. Slit windows. If the canal is breached or the Crown falls, this becomes the fallback point. The high ground. They hold here."
Selune studied the slopes, the defensive lines, the elevation. She could already see how the basalt would need to be layered, where the foundation had to sink deeper. Daalo had taught her to build for failure first and to leave nothing unreinforced.
Altan unrolled a third map.
"This," he said, "is how it all connects."
Three bridges would anchor from the mainland, one to the Seaborne Crown, another to the landfill island, and a third spanning between both. Strong foundations, capable of bearing full troop columns and wagon convoys. From the Crown, two more bridges would stretch outward like arms, one to the north and one to the south, linking directly to the Crescent Spire.
"The Crown sits between," Altan said. "Not just as symbol, but as corridor. Trade, ceremony, and retreat, if it comes to that. The bridges must hold. They're not just crossings. They're arteries."
Selune nodded.
Then Altan added, without ceremony, "Both islands will be strengthened. The sea walls reinforced. Enough to withstand siege engines and the worst the storms can throw at us."
He reached for a final sheet, covered in looping, angled sigils.
"I'll draft these myself. They'll be carved into the outer walls. Not for blessing. For recognition. Let those who land here know who built it and what it's built for."
Selune said nothing. One island to welcome, the other to guard. Together, they anchored the canal, the sea, and the uncertain line between alliance and war.
The stone would not remember.
It would hold.
The canal shimmered beneath the morning sun, reflecting the scaffolds of Seaborne Crown rising on the sea's edge. On the cliffway above, Selune unrolled the final schematics atop a cedar worktable, her boots crusted with dust and seawater.
It was a day's ride from Bastion Vrael. A single hour by canal.
The canal exited into the sea at the coastal city known as Vrael Gate, already under construction under Selune's oversight. But now, her assignment shifted. She handed supervision of Vrael Gate's finishing phase to another engineer and turned her full attention to the new project, a grand vision rising from the reserved landfill island northwest of the harbor.
Construction began swiftly.
The site moved like a living mechanism. Mages stood at key intervals, their glyph-marked arms raised, weaving elemental force into precision work. Stone blocks, quarried upriver, were floated into place and sealed not with mortar but shaped pressure, water-locked and heat-cured. Earth mages grounded platforms into bedrock while windbinders lifted timber arches and roofing beams into position with careful drafts of controlled air.
Behind them, laborers moved in tightly drilled units. Scaffolds were braced and lifted. Ironwood beams were ferried across pulley lines and driven into sockets with syncopated rhythm. No shouting. No chaos. Orders were passed in clipped tones from foreman to master builder to mage.
Selune walked the line with her slate and stylus, adjusting frame angles, checking the grain on newly lifted pillars, inspecting glyph integrity on the stabilizing cores.
In the eastern quarter, masons chiseled foundation etchings into load-bearing walls. Runes were embedded for structural resilience, not enchantment, a technique honed under Altan's directive. Fire-channelers tempered metal fittings where cold iron met treated stone. At the forge station, armorers shaped brackets for arena seating, each piece stamped with the Stormguard seal before being passed to runners.
By midday, half the lower foundations of the Crown's eastward promenade had risen above shoulder height. Workshop tents flapped against the sea wind, filled with engineers drafting, carving, recalibrating.
Craftsmen and spellcasters worked side by side, not in hierarchy but in sequence. When a structure needed to be raised, the mages prepared the flow. The craftsmen locked it in place. The laborers braced and sealed. No step wasted. No time lost.
Selune passed a crew sealing the base of the northern archway. A stormcrafter beside her raised a brow and asked, "Too fast?"
"Not if it holds," she said without looking up. "Anchor the third girder before dusk. If the west winds change, we'll have to reinforce the joints."
He nodded and moved.
Selune stepped back as the platform anchors were set and pillars rose into the air. Her hair was heavy with salt, her hands blackened with ash.
Seaborne Crown was no longer a name on parchment.
It had begun.