Dawn rose over Frostfang like a reluctant blessing, touching the scorched stones with a pale gold that could not quite drive away the night's memory. The city had survived, but survival had left its mark: shattered walls, charred homes, gutters choked with the blood of friend and foe alike.
The people of Frostfang emerged slowly from hiding — from cellars, from barricaded chapels, from corners where they had wept and prayed as the siege thundered around them. Their eyes were wide, haunted, blinking at a world transformed by violence.
The carrion birds wheeled overhead, still hungry, but dared not land with so many living souls stirring.
---
Aldric stood on the highest battlement, wrapped in a clean bandage that stained red anew with every shallow breath. Pain pulsed through his ribs, but he refused to rest, refused even to sit. His gaze swept over what remained of the city, searching for any spark of hope in the wreckage.
Beside him, Rowena gently took his gauntleted hand.
"You should rest," she urged. Her voice was soft but steady, the voice that had carried so many prayers through long nights.
"I cannot," Aldric answered, shaking his head. "The city will look to me now. I must stand."
Rowena sighed, her fingers brushing a lock of hair from his sweat-damp brow. "Then I will stand with you."
For a moment, he leaned into her, drawing quiet strength. Together, they surveyed the ruin below.
---
Kaelin led the wounded through what had once been a grand merchant street, now reduced to rubble. She barked orders to the survivors, organizing bucket chains to douse lingering fires, forming burial crews for the dead.
Children wept as their mothers lifted away fallen timbers, searching for brothers or fathers who might still draw breath.
Kaelin carried a boy from the ruins of a bakery, the child coughing, eyes too wide. She set him down gently, then handed him a crust of half-burned bread from her pouch.
"Eat," she told him, brushing soot from his face. "You've got to keep strong."
The boy nodded, though tears still ran down his cheeks.
As Kaelin straightened, a woman caught her arm. "My husband—he is gone," she sobbed. "What do I do?"
Kaelin looked her straight in the eyes. "You live," she said firmly. "You keep breathing. You rebuild. That's what you do."
The woman wept harder, but she nodded, and Kaelin moved on, hammer slung across her back, shoulders squared.
---
At the heart of the citadel, Maerlyn stood among the dead kings' bones, now laid in quiet heaps to be returned to their tombs. The witch's face was gray with exhaustion, every line etched deeper by the cost of her magic.
A monk approached her, wary of the black staff still sparking with embers of cold fire.
"Lady Maerlyn," he said, voice cracking, "some of the folk wonder…was it truly the ancestors who rose? Or…some darker thing?"
Maerlyn's eyes were distant, lost among the shadows of memory.
"It was both," she answered, too tired to lie. "I called them, but something older answered. Older than kings. Older than this city."
The monk flinched, crossing himself, and fled without another word.
Alone, Maerlyn knelt, placing her hand on one yellowed skull crowned with a twisted circlet of bronze.
"Rest now," she whispered, a tremor in her voice. "I will guard them as you once did."
The witch closed her eyes, and for the first time since the siege began, she wept.
---
In the high council hall, with its tapestries scorched and its windows shattered, a gathering of survivors tried to rebuild a semblance of order.
Merchants argued about what stores of grain remained. The old captain of the city guard, his left arm bound in a sling, shouted about sealing the broken gate. Priests prayed over lists of the dead, their ink smearing with tears.
When Aldric entered, leaning on Rowena for support, the room fell silent.
He stepped forward, every movement a battle.
"Frostfang stands," he said, voice raw but resolute. "We have paid the price, but we have held."
No one answered for a long moment. Then, like rain on a parched field, voices rose one after another.
"Hail the wolf-king!"
"Frostfang lives!"
"By the gods, we live!"
Aldric raised his sword — still stained with the Vulture King's blood — and the hall roared its answer.
---
Beyond the walls, the enemy lay scattered, leaderless. Some marsh soldiers fled for the black swamps that had birthed them. Others knelt before Frostfang's walls, begging mercy, flinging down their arms.
Kaelin oversaw their capture, her hammer still dripping.
"Prisoners?" one of her lieutenants asked.
Kaelin spat on the ground. "They fought well," she said. "Chain them, but feed them. Their deaths won't rebuild these walls."
---
On the second night after the battle, Aldric finally allowed himself to sleep, collapsing in his chambers with Rowena curled beside him, her head on his chest.
But dreams offered no mercy. He saw the Vulture King again, rising from the pyre, wounds weeping black, eyes glowing with eternal hate. He saw Frostfang burning anew, a sea of crows tearing its heart out.
He woke gasping, hand reaching for his sword, before Rowena soothed him with a touch.
"It's over," she whispered. "You won."
Aldric shook his head, haunted.
"For now," he breathed. "Only for now."
---
Maerlyn slept little herself, haunted by what she had called forth. In the quiet of the crypts, she spoke to things only she could see, things that whispered through the stones.
"They will come again," she murmured to the shadows, tracing runes into a candle's guttering flame. "And when they do, I will be ready."
The shadows answered with a sound like distant thunder.
---
On the third day, Frostfang began to bury its dead.
Funeral pyres burned along the riverbanks, their smoke rising like a black banner into the dawn. Aldric, Rowena, Kaelin, and Maerlyn stood side by side as the bodies of soldiers and townsfolk alike were honored.
Kaelin smashed a drinking horn against a stone in salute.
"May the gods hold your cups full and your swords sharp," she called to the flames.
Maerlyn lifted a single black candle, its wax running like tears.
"I will remember you," she vowed, voice soft as the winter wind.
Rowena clung to Aldric's arm, silent, her heart breaking for every family torn apart.
As the smoke climbed higher, a hush fell over the city — the hush of wounds too deep for words, the hush of a people forced to begin again.
---
In the weeks that followed, the walls were rebuilt, stone upon stone, each block a testament to survival. Children who had hidden in cellars returned to play in the streets, though they looked over their shoulders often, still afraid of shadows.
Food was scarce, but neighbors shared what they had. Old rivalries died beside the bodies on the pyres, at least for a time.
And still, every evening, Aldric stood atop the battlements, scanning the horizon for fresh banners of war.
---
One night, as the wind howled across the plain, a messenger arrived on a lathered horse, half-dead from the road. His tabard was torn, stained with marsh mud.
He fell to his knees before Aldric, gasping.
"My lord…there is news from the east."
Aldric braced himself, every nerve on edge.
"Speak."
The messenger swallowed hard.
"Another army comes. Larger than the first. Led by one they call the Widow of Crows."
Aldric closed his eyes, steadying the rage and weariness twisting inside him.
"How long?"
"Three weeks, perhaps four, my lord," the messenger whispered.
Rowena stepped forward, ice in her voice.
"Then we will be ready."
Aldric looked at her, at Kaelin, at Maerlyn — each marked by war, each unwilling to break.
"Yes," he said, his voice low but unshaken. "We will be ready."
---
And so Frostfang stood once more, battered but unbowed, its people forged in the fires of survival. The wolf-king's banner still flew, though the storm had only just begun to gather.