The fires from the last skirmish still smoldered when Dawnspire began to prepare for war. The eastern horizon lay wrapped in mist, but every soul in the city could feel the storm gathering beyond it. Merchants whispered of black banners sighted in far villages. Farmers swore that the earth trembled at night, as if something vast was marching unseen beneath the soil. And in the halls of the guild, men sharpened their blades with hands that trembled not from fear, but from anticipation.
Grimblade did not waste time. At dawn, his voice rang through the guildhall, steady as a hammer against steel. "We have no days left to waste. Every hour unspent is blood spilled when they come. Prepare the city. Prepare yourselves. The siege begins before the first horn is blown."
The words carried through the city like wildfire. Masons were set to work on the walls, piling stone upon stone, filling cracks with molten pitch that hardened into black armor. Blacksmiths worked until their arms shook, hammering out spearheads and arrow tips by the thousands. Every child who could carry a bucket carried water, every elder wove bandages until their fingers bled.
Dawnspire became a fortress.
Yet for all their labor, fear bled into every corner. The memories of the western gate still haunted them—the betrayal of their own, their brothers in arms turning into black-eyed thralls. No one spoke of it aloud, but all wondered the same: when the next siege came, how many within the walls would fall to the same corruption?
Grimblade saw the doubt, but he did not soothe it. He did not speak of hope. Instead, he gave them steel. "Doubt all you like," he told the soldiers in the courtyard as they drilled, "but when the enemy comes, doubt will not keep you alive. Only the edge of your blade will."
Kaelen stood nearby, bow in hand, smirking despite the tension. "Inspiring as always. You really know how to give the lads warm fuzzies."
"They don't need comfort," Grimblade said without looking at him. "They need to fear failure more than death."
Kaelen raised an eyebrow. "And what about you? Do you fear either?"
Grimblade tightened the strap of his gauntlet, eyes fixed on the eastern wall. "I fear wasting time."
The guild's preparations stretched into the night. Mages carved wards into the walls, weaving glyphs that shimmered faintly like veins of light. Rangers lined the parapets with oil cauldrons and boulders pried from the quarry. Scouts were dispatched into the eastern woods, though fewer returned with each passing day. Those who did spoke of strange lights flickering in the mist, of forests shifting paths to trap the unwary, of whispers that called their names until they nearly slit their own throats.
One scout, a woman named Erynn, staggered into the guildhall pale as death, her eyes wild. She swore she had seen towers of bone rising in the forest, taller than mountains, crowned with banners woven from human hair. She spoke until her voice broke, then collapsed dead before the healers could reach her.
Her last words clung to the air like smoke: "They're already here."
The guild fell into a deeper silence after that, and Grimblade knew the siege had already begun—not with fire or steel, but with fear.
Still, he pressed harder. He ordered the gates reinforced with layered iron, commanded tunnels dug beneath the city for hidden passage, forced his hunters to train with new ferocity. Day after day, the clang of steel and the roar of commands echoed through Dawnspire, a song of preparation sung against the storm.
One night, Kaelen found Grimblade in the armory, sharpening his blade by candlelight. "You know," Kaelen said, leaning against the doorway, "I sometimes wonder if you even bleed. You work until others collapse, you fight until walls fall, you stare at that damned horizon as if you'll drag the enemy into the city by glaring hard enough."
Grimblade didn't look up. "You wonder too much."
Kaelen chuckled. "Maybe. Or maybe I know you're carrying more than you show. The men follow you, Grim, but they don't see the weight on your back. I do. And when the storm hits, you'll have to carry all of us. That's what breaks men—not the enemy, but the burden."
Grimblade's hand stilled on the whetstone. For a moment, silence hung. Then he said, low and firm, "If the burden breaks me, then I wasn't worth following."
Kaelen's smirk faded. He studied his friend for a long moment, then finally sighed and left him to his blade.
The days bled together. Preparations became routine, exhaustion became normal. Yet tension wound tighter with each sunrise.
Then, on the seventh night, the first true omen arrived.
A horn sounded from the eastern watchtower—not alarm, but warning. The guards had seen movement in the mist. Not torches, not banners, not men. Something larger. Something that shook the earth with each step.
Grimblade climbed the eastern wall and stood in the night air, his cloak snapping in the wind. Beyond the treeline, shadows moved. Towering shapes, dozens of them, pacing slowly toward the city. For hours they lingered, never crossing the tree line, only watching, waiting, as if to remind Dawnspire of what was coming.
When dawn broke, they were gone. But the fear they left behind lingered sharper than any sword.
Grimblade descended from the wall, his jaw set like stone. He called the guild together in the courtyard, his voice carrying over the weary, the fearful, the wounded.
"You saw them," he said. "You know they're close. They wait because they believe fear will soften us. They believe our walls will crumble before their touch. They are wrong."
He raised his sword, and the steel caught the sunlight like fire.
"When they come, we will not cower. We will not yield. We will remind them that Dawnspire does not fall to shadows. It burns shadows away."
The roar that answered him was not one of joy, nor hope. It was the roar of desperation sharpened into defiance. The sound of men and women who knew death was coming and would meet it teeth bared.
And above them all, Grimblade stood like a blade drawn from the forge, unbending, unbroken, already pointed at the enemy.
For the siege was no longer a possibility. It was a promise. And the promise would soon be kept.