Location: Lower Realm - Ironspine Mountain Pass (Near Exit)
Date/Time: 10 Ashwhisper, 9938 AZI
The wind had teeth.
Jayde walked alongside the lead wagon with her hands buried in her cloak, boots crunching through frost that hadn't melted despite the late morning hour. The Ironspine Pass squeezed the trade road into a throat of grey stone barely wide enough for two wagons abreast, and the wind funneled through it like water through a pipe—accelerating, sharpening, turning every gust into something that cut through wool and leather alike.
Wind speed increasing. Twenty knots, gusting higher. Temperature dropped four degrees since dawn. Pressure falling.
Two days since the campfire. Two days since she'd said the words aloud—sparkcasters, refining, runes—and made them real instead of theoretical. The caravan had entered the mountain pass on the morning after, and the world had narrowed to stone walls and grey sky and the endless grinding of wagon wheels on packed earth.
