CHAPTER 4: Ravencair Rising
Ravencair Crag, Eastern Gravenmarsh – Three Weeks After the Hollow Teeth Ambush
The mountain did not welcome them.
Ravencair was a half-forgotten ruin, a ring of jagged stone rising from the mist-choked cliffs like broken teeth. Half of it had collapsed in some war two generations ago—fought between lords now dust. The other half had been left to wolves, vultures, and the slow rot of time.
Kael stood at the highest ridge, cloak snapping in the wind. Below, men and women hauled timber up treacherous paths. Blacksmiths repurposed rusted gates into spikes. Fires burned through the night. The sound of hammers had replaced birdsong.
Myrren joined him, panting from the climb. "It's not a fortress yet."
"No," Kael said. "But it will be."
He had chosen the site himself. Not for beauty. Not even for its strategic location. But for what it represented: a place abandoned by the old order—now reborn by force.
"We'll need to secure the cliff paths," she said, scanning the fog. "Rains make them a death trap. And the lower halls are still crawling with bats and gods know what."
"Clear them," Kael said. "Torch the rot. Build into the bones."
A group of newly trained fighters—barely older than boys—passed below with lumber and shovels. One of them wore a half-melted breastplate too large for him, marked with a lion sigil carved over in ash and soot.
Dren came stomping up the ridge next, mud to his knees. "We're calling it Firebrand Hold. Has a nice ring."
Kael glanced at him. "No."
"No?"
He pointed to the jagged keep rising from the mist. "Ravencair. Let the Empire remember the name they abandoned. Let them choke on it."
Dren grinned. "Suit yourself, Sovereign."
Kael narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.
Later that night…
The rain fell again, soaking the half-roofed hall where Kael and his council gathered around a stone table blackened with age. A rough map had been scratched into its surface—showing valleys, passes, old roads long erased from official charts.
Thessa Grimhall arrived late, bruised and splattered with gore.
"South patrol ran into a Vellgaard scout team," she reported. "Killed two. One escaped."
Kael nodded. "Good."
Myrren frowned. "You wanted one to escape?"
"I want them to know we've stopped running," Kael said. "Let them know we're building something they'll need to tear down."
Dren leaned over the table. "A real fortress will draw more than scouts. Once they believe we're settling in, they'll send a force to crush us before winter."
"They'll try," Kael replied.
"Do we hold it?" Thessa asked. "If a legion comes?"
Kael looked around the rain-slicked hall. Flames crackled in iron braziers. The faces staring back were worn, bloodied, but burning with belief.
"We hold it," he said.
No one argued.
Outside, before dawn…
Kael walked the upper wall alone. The wind was colder here. Thinner. His breath came in clouds.
Below, the workers were silent now. The forge fires dimmed. The stone keep loomed behind him—half-built, half-ruined.
And yet, it stood.
He drew his dagger and cut his palm, just enough to bleed. Then he pressed the hand against the rough stone wall and whispered:
"I will not be forgotten. Not like this place."
As his blood soaked into the rock, Kael swore silently—not to a god, not to a crown—but to the ghost of Ashmark, and to the future they were forging here.
Elsewhere...
South of Ravencair, at a Vellgaard war camp
The escaped scout knelt in the mud before his commander, eyes wide with fear.
"There were banners," he stammered. "And walls. And fire. And… a name, carved in the stone gate."
The commander raised an eyebrow. "What name?"
The scout swallowed hard. "Kael Sovereign."