The Tarlington Fortress looked considerably less dramatic by moonlight.
Jack had to admit that when he first laid eyes on the castle from the bridge, half-mad from a newly forming mana circuit and propped up on a borrowed cane, the place had carried a certain mythic weight. The sandstone walls rising from a mirror-black lake, the single tower standing vigil over the north like some forgotten sentinel — it was the sort of fortress that made a person feel small in the good way.
Now, a week later, with Zero standing at the gate holding a lantern and the distant sound of Thar arguing with a carpenter about load-bearing walls echoing across the water, it mostly looked like a construction site.
'Give it time,' Jack told himself as he crossed the bridge. The frost on the sandstone caught the moonlight in pale blue flickers. At least the storm had finally passed. The air smelled of wet stone and pine resin from the freshly cut timber being hauled up from Blackthorn's forest edge.
