The horizon did not bring the sun; it brought the dead.
From the highest precipice of the Blackfang Fortress, where the mountain path sheared off into a vertical drop toward the lower valleys, the vanguard scouts had been signaling since midnight. The frantic, erratic flashes of their silver mirrors were not warnings of an invading armada, nor were they the tactical codes of a foreign vanguard. They were the desperate rhythms of a border guard witnessing an impossible migration.
Gwen stood at the edge of the observation terrace, her long woolen traveling cloak snapping violently in the freezing, copper-scented wind that now blew continuously from the northeast. Her amber eyes, permanently rimmed with a thin, metallic ring of liquid solar gold, were fixed on the winding serpentine pass below. Through the thick, low-hanging mist of the valley, a slow, wretched column of shapes was crawling upward toward the sanctuary of the stone gates.
