Blood on the Ramparts

The night before the breach had been marked by an unnatural, suffocating weather inversion over the northern fjord. By midnight, a thick, freezing Arctic sea mist—so dense that sentries on the parapets could barely see their own gloved hands—had crept up from the ocean, blanketing the sheer basalt cliffs and lower water gates in a silent, ghostly shroud. The temperature hovered near zero, the damp cold penetrating through heavy wool…