Three weeks had passed.
Not enough time for anything to truly settle, but more than enough for patterns to stop feeling coincidental. Trafalgar leaned back in his chair, boots resting on the edge of the desk as the flying ship cut through the frozen air. Outside the window, the world had turned white. Endless snowfields stretched beneath them, broken by mountain ranges that rose higher than Thousand Steps ever had, jagged and oppressive, like the spine of something ancient pushing through the surface of the world.
His seventeenth birthday was close now. Too close to pretend it wasn't approaching, even if no one had mentioned it yet.
The war hadn't slowed.
If anything, it had grown louder.
