The wind was colder than usual.
Blackblood Forest loomed on the horizon. A distant line of dark that seemed to breathe, slow and heavy. Eli approached, quietly.
"They're coming," Ian murmured.
Eli stood beside him.
"Yeah."
"You think we'll survive?"
"I don't know," Eli said. "But we'll give them hell trying."
——–—
Days Later.
The cries began in the southern market, and by nightfall they echoed across every ward of Esgard.
"Reopen the Crucible!"
"Let the blood run!"
"Let us feel alive again!"
It started as whispers—half-sung in the smoky corners of bars, tucked between verses of old pit-fighter songs. But by the third day, those whispers had grown teeth. And by the seventh, they had banners, protest lines, and a thousand voices gathered at the square steps, chanting as if blood alone could keep the city breathing.
They weren't hungry for violence.
Not really.
They were starving for noise.
