Silver Shield Sentry

The Silver Shield's leonine sentinels hadn't drawn their warbows in five years. Not since the rebellion ended and Khymia closed its borders to lick its wounds. They stood watch on the walls of New Dawn, watching the horizon.

Then the ground began to skip. Not shake, but skip. Like a stone thrown across water, time itself stuttered in the Pristine Northwest. Crops aged to dust in minutes, then sprouted again. Rivers flowed backward. A patrol aged ten years in an afternoon, then returned to youth by sunset.

Palifala Weslinath was tearing time apart to find Praetoria's secret. The ulund sent messengers asking for aid. The battle mages' wagons rolled past New Dawn's gates, headed north. But the grand prior deliberated. Khymia had bled enough. Let others bleed now.

Until a child walked out the door of her home and didn't come back. She'd aged to dust in the front yard. Her parents found only clothes and bones that crumbled at their touch. The next day, a merchant caravan arrived as infants, their cargo rotted to nothing.

The deliberation ended. The Silver Shield would march.

The sentinels hefted their warbows, weapons that could punch through dragonscale at three hundred yards, and formed ranks.

North. Where time breaks.