The last night before the war began was quiet.
Not silent — silence required the absence of sound, and the Ashwall garrison never achieved silence. The thirty-four-kilometer fortification line hummed with the ambient noise of 60,000 soldiers occupying a structure designed for 20,000: footsteps on stone, the murmur of conversation in barracks stacked three-deep, the metallic percussion of equipment maintenance, the irregular bark of sergeants conducting inspections. The noise was the soundtrack of institutional readiness — the sound of an army waiting for the event it had spent thirty-one days preparing for.
But the noise was quiet — muted, restrained, the particular acoustic quality of people who were talking softly because they were thinking loudly.
