Dearest reader, it is said that the sun is a generous god, flinging its warmth across the world without expectation. But in Nevareth, the light does not give; it demands. It is a sharp, exacting thing that requires a man to pay for his vision with the squint of his eyes and the numbing of his skin.
By the fifth hour of the morning, the empire did not wake to the sun. It woke to the iron.
The Ice Chimes began their work at the first gray smear of dawn. They were not the bells of Solmire, which rang with a brassy, joyous clangor. These were forged with silver cores and tempered in the blood of the mountain. In the High District, they sang with a crystalline purity that shivered through the glass of the palace windows. In the industrial quarters, where the smoke of the forges fought a losing battle against the frost, they struck with a heavy, ominous thrum.
One strike.
