The morning air sitting low over the Silver River was no longer characterized by the bitter scent of panic and exhausted draft animals. Instead, it smelled of woodsmoke, roasting oats, and the sharp, metallic tang of heavy commerce.
The sun had not yet cleared the eastern ridgeline, but the Pendelton Corridor was already awake. The black steel truss of the bridge stood as a silent, unyielding monument to engineered efficiency, its massive timber deck carrying a steady, rhythmic flow of early-morning traffic. The system Arthur von Pendelton had designed was operating exactly to its mathematical specifications. The physical act of crossing the river had been reduced to a mundane, frictionless event.
However, the sheer volume of that frictionless event was beginning to violently reshape the environment surrounding it.
