Timeline: TC1853.02.25 (Late afternoon)
Location: Seven Peaks Territory, Eastern Valley
Eight hours of rest, two meals, and enough essence recovery tea to float a battleship later, Raven stood at the valley's southern perimeter with renewed determination and mostly-replenished spiritual reserves.
"You're really going to build walls," Taron said, studying the open grassland that marked the settlement's most vulnerable approach. "After the singing tower and the eternal forge, somehow walls seem... mundane."
Raven smiled. "You've never seen walls built by the Coral Architects."
"The who?"
"Species that existed in the deep ocean trenches before the Sundering. They were colonial organisms—millions of individual polyps working together to create reef structures that could withstand currents strong enough to scour steel. Their walls didn't just protect—they lived, grew, repaired themselves, and evolved to counter whatever threatened them."
