2 Days Before Present Timeline (Before Chapter 234 Timeline and 3 days later than previous chapter)
The road to Millbrook had never been this crowded.
Aldrin gripped the reins of his horse-drawn carriage, his weathered merchant's eyes scanning the traffic ahead with growing disbelief. Three—no, 'four'—other carriages were moving in the same direction. Merchant wagons, by the look of them.
Loaded with goods, driven by men with that distinctive calculating expression that marked their profession.
'What in the hells?' Aldrin thought, his gray-streaked beard twitching as he frowned.
Millbrook had always been a backwater. A place you passed through, not a destination. The soil was shit for farming—too acidic, poisoned by some mineral deposits. The location was remote. There was nothing here worth traveling for.
Until now.
Aldrin's head turned, almost against his will, toward the horizon.
And there it was.
The Tower.
