Alpheo stood on the rise, his gaze climbing the sun-bleached ramparts of the city that had been his sanctuary and his forge for thirteen years.
He could still vividly recall the day he had first arrived at these gates, a man with little more than the barest skeletal remains of a plan and a staggering, nearly translucent mountain of dreams. It had been a desperate gamble, where the dice of luck and iron mixed in the best of way , in something that happens perhaps once in a century. By all rights of the world, he should have died in the dirt; instead, he had built a princedom.
He closed his eyes, allowing the architecture of the place to etch itself into his mind, the smell of the bakeries, the rhythmic clanging of the smithies, the laughter of the children who knew no other world but the one he had secured.
This was home. This was where he had finally stopped being a ghost and started being a man.
This was where he truly started to live.
