The Southern border did not ask. It told. Towers every ten kilometers. Fences layered with Aetherite film. Drone nests on ridges and in culverts. Checkpoints built into the rock. The Viserion crown called it the Iron Line. The Abyssal Kin had other names for it, all bitter.
At 05:42 local, every tower display blinked to black for a single breath, then returned with a new line of text at the top left: war. No horns. No speech. Just one word and a flood of red pins crawling along three sectors at once.
On the palace command floor in Valdris, the wall screens woke in layers. Satellite passes. High-altitude drones. Wardline telemetry from the Aetherite lattice that ran like a second set of nerves under the mountains. Road cameras from the lonely places where you could stand for an hour and hear nothing but wind.
