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The night passed in heavy, undisturbed quiet beneath the ironwood beams of the Zerith Great Lodge.

When the first pale sliver of dawn began to bleed across the eastern sky, cutting through the thick sulfurous mists of the lowlands, Sol slowly opened his eyes. After a good night of sleep, his mind was sharp and refreshed, stripped out of the previous fatigue.

Beside him, Kira and Zeyra were already stirring beneath the thick furs, their natural warrior instincts waking them before the morning horns could sound.

Without wasting a breath on idle conversation, the three prepared their gear.

Sol first wore his black armor, checked the tautness of his boots,

He lifted the Dreadwing blade, testing its balance before sliding it smoothly into the leather baldric slung on his side.

At his hip, the leather pouch holding the Mountain-Marrow Stone hung securely, its heavy, grounding resonance a quiet reminder of the threshold awaiting him once this campaign was finished.

He then helped the girls wear their gear.

Stepping out of the lodge into the damp, chill air of the morning, they found the Veynar warriors had woken even before them and had already formed up in disciplined ranks along the raised central boardwalk.

Commander Thauren had left twenty seasoned Veynar spearmen under a reliable veteran to maintain absolute control over the subdued Zerith populace.

The central wooden thoroughfares had been scrubbed of blood, the bodies cleared, and the surviving Zerith laborers were lined up in disciplined work columns under the watchful eyes of Veynar spearmen.

The remaining eighty elite warriors of the vanguard had assembled near the shattered front gate, their bodies fully armored, and their stone-tipped spears and blade gleaming in the early light.

Warchief Veylara, clad in her signature armor with her spear gripped in her hand, stood alongside High Shaman Zephyra and Commander Thauren.

"The men are fed, armed, and ready,"Veylara said, turning her deep blue eyes toward Sol as he approached. " Eat your food and let’s march immediately. The sooner we reach the base of their cliffs, the less time they have to realize their chieftains are never coming back."

No need to delay, I’ll just eat the smoked jerky along the way. Let’s move," Sol replied simply.

Hearing this Veylara nodded, eating the high layer beast’s jerky would actually be better than some rando, breakfast they just had.

The troops moved out, leaving the stagnant, damp air of the Zerith swamp behind.

The march from the wet, low-lying basin to the dry southern highlands took several hours of swift, relentless trekking.

As the vanguard advanced, the environment underwent a complete, dramatic transformation. The foul-smelling swamp grass, stagnant canals, and towering trees gradually fell away, replaced by hard, cracked grey dirt, scratchy thorn-bushes, and another rougher species of trees..

The humid, sulfur-choked air thinned out into a crisp, cold mountain wind that whipped fiercely across the rising ridges.

Their pace was swift. As the land itself was changing under their feet... soon the last soft patches of lowland giving way to harder slopes, broken shale, and the first true climbs of the southern ridges.

But the Veynar warriors still moved in complete silence, the soft thud of boots on rising stone and packed dirt the only consistent sound among them.

Breath was controlled. Gear was bound tight to prevent any unnecessary noise, after all they were still in Great Orrath.

After an hour of hard running across those rising slopes, the forbidding outline of the ridge finally loomed against the horizon.

It rose like the spine of a petrified titan, a long, broken mass of gray stone that dominated the skyline.

There was nothing gentle about it. The rock looked ancient and unyielding, its upper edges sharp against the pale morning sky. Even at a distance, the natural fortress of the Gray Marauders was unmistakable.

The true stronghold sat perched atop a massive natural stone shelf, elevated hundreds of paces above the surrounding gorges.

From below it appeared almost unreachable... a broad, elevated plateau of broken rock and open ground that commanded every approach.

The only visible frontal path for a force of any real size was a narrow, treacherous switchback that wound up the sheer face of the rock.

The trail hugged the stone in tight, exposed turns, flanked on both sides by vertical drops that would turn a single misstep into a fatal fall.

Natural kill-zones were everywhere: overhangs that could hide drop-stones, narrow chokepoints where a few determined defenders could hold against many, and long stretches of open trail with nowhere to take cover.

It was the kind of approach that favored the defenders so completely that most armies would have looked for another way... or given up entirely.

At the base of the lower gorge, concealed within a dense thicket of dry brush and low, twisted trees, the Veynar vanguard came to a halt.

Warriors dropped to a knee or settled into low crouches, using the scrub for cover while scouts confirmed the final stretch of ground ahead. The silence among them remained intact.

Only the soft whisper of wind across stone and the distant cry of a high-ridge bird marked the morning.

Sol stood near the front of the halted column, crimson eyes fixed on the elevated shelf above.

He remembered this place.

The last time he had come this far into Marauder territory, the situation had been entirely different.

His numbers had been small, his strength still limited, and a direct assault on the main settlement atop the stone shelf had been out of the question.

Instead he had settled for an ambush against one of their outer settlements... a lesser cluster of huts and pens that had sat lower on the approach, closer to the hunting routes and the easier trails.

That outer parameter had been vulnerable enough to strike and fade from. But it had never been the true heart of their power.

Looking at the ground around them now, Sol could see the difference.

The place where the Veynar currently waited had once been part of that outer parameter.

The remains were still there if one knew how to look... flattened areas where mud-and-branch huts had stood, scattered stones that had once weighted roofs, and the faint, weathered paths that had connected the lower settlement to the main climb.

It was all abandoned now.

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