Description
Seven winters past, a knight left Ironspire under a false charge, sigil cut, name scraped from the board; out on the Brass Coast, steel and silence bought meals. A scholar, expelled from a southern collegium for printing what the monasteries would not, has been stitching the Deep Under's real terms from a dozen hands. A messenger finds both, or either, and the news is the same: the great houses have renewed their bargain with what sleeps under the range in exchange for another hundred years of crowns. The woods' wolves, once quarry, now walk unshot—covenant's clause. A crown sits on a childhood friend's head, silver only part of the chain. A sister-in-law rules three duchies in a mother's name. The pact is not a metaphor; the tithe is written. The exile can try to sunder the bargain, serve it for a way home, or walk south and let the realm become what the mountain always meant to make. Steel or a satchel of manuscript: Ironspire will test both, and the wolves no longer take orders only from hounds.
