Iron Justiciars—two hundred strong—filed from the rows of standing stones that framed the plateau's northern edge. Their polished helms already wore masks of drying salt, proof they had marched the seabed, too. Each held a flame-quencher shield: wide, ridged disks of obsidian-dark alloy treated to smother fire on contact. Their pike-points glimmered blue.
A captain at their front—crest dyed in black ink—raised his fist. "Rebels!" he bellowed across the fifty-pace gap. "Your plague has poisoned the capital! Lay down arms or face pure judgment."
Wind whisked his words into tatters, but their meaning—blame and iron—carried. Just behind Draven, a line of archers shifted uneasily, leather bowgrips creaking.
Vaelira did not parley. She lifted one gloved hand, palm outward. The signal was neither rushed nor delayed; it arrived at the exact moment when every soldier's lungs had half-filled and their muscles not yet fired.
"Now," she said, soft as snowfall.
