Date: TC1853.11.13 (afternoon to night)
Location: Thornwall
The gates were barred from the inside.
Raven stood on the road fifty meters from the eastern entrance and studied them — heavy timber reinforced with iron bands, the kind of practical construction that border towns maintained against weather and the occasional territorial dispute, not against anything that could climb vertical stone. A Codex shrine sat to the right of the gate, small, weathered, the candles inside dark. Nobody had tended it in days.
Above the gate, on the wall's parapet, a face appeared. Then another. Then a crossbow, aimed at her chest with the shaking precision of someone who'd been scared for so long their hands couldn't remember steady.
"Who's there?" The voice cracked. Young. Male. The particular tone of a militia member who'd been assigned wall duty and prayed every night that nothing would test the assignment.
