Ah, but even gods forget where they first bled.
The temple was one such wound, a hollow carved into the cliffs by centuries of reverence and ruin. It loomed above the encampment like a ghost half remembered, its arches black with soot, its statues eyeless and bowed as if in mourning.
The air itself was wrong here, too still, too reverent, as though the stones were holding their breath.
The procession had stopped to rest, unaware that history was about to wake beneath their boots.
The knights dismounted with ritual precision, checking weapons, tending to weary horses that snorted clouds of steam into the arid air.
Diplomats gathered under broken columns, whispering about alliances and harvest routes, their words thin against the silence of the cliffs.
And there, in the middle of it all, Soren, ever the emperor of discipline, stood with Ryse and Lord Venrick, maps unfurled, voices low. Every gesture of his was control sculpted into human shape.
