Fourteen days after Demeterra's army left Deepwell, Zephyr rebuilt his world into a weapon.
The Iron Covenant's military machine — the thing he'd spent a year constructing — shifted from peacetime economy to wartime configuration with the mechanical precision of a clock changing hours. Every settlement, every forge, every trade route, every prayer service recalibrated toward a single purpose.
Ashenveil became a logistics hub. The forges ran triple shifts — three teams of smiths rotating through the heat in eight-hour blocks, hammering stonesteel into arrowheads, spear tips, shield facings, and replacement blade edges. The iron song of the forge district carried across the settlement day and night, a constant metallic pulse that replaced the morning birdsong and became, for the residents of Ashenveil, the sound of survival.
