The carriages stopped a kilometer out.
No lights. No talk. Solenne dropped from hers first, boots silent on packed snow, and the rest followed into a forest gone the color of ash under a sky that hadn't produced a star in an hour.
Arthur's network went out low. Not the full spread yet. Just enough thread to read the tree line and confirm the ground ahead was clean.
Roz sat forward on his shoulder, red eyes narrowed, reading what the network couldn't reach. Between the two of them a picture built itself out of nothing, tree by tree, before anyone else could see past their own hand in front of their face.
The fortress arrived the way things arrived at night. Not all at once. First a shape that didn't move like the trees around it. Then stone. Then the north gate, torchlight bleeding orange at the guard posts, and the eastern service corridor sitting exactly where Sable's drawing said it would.
