An orphanage stoop, a splintered argument, and a boy who won’t take a gift back. Bricks bake in makeshift kilns while names and nerves harden—Squee Squee, Celeste, Jesse, Zachariah—hope hammered out of clay. Somewhere between goodbyes and good intentions, Cliff’s rations keep vanishing, leaving only a smear of something wrong.Across the bridge, metal gleams and politics sharpen. Bahamut’s garden lends a lighter heart; the council trades sealed letters for slow promises. Raids mapped, patterns found, and rumors that bite. With weeks of deliberation ahead, the question lingers: how far will they go to bend a dragon war—and what’s already eating at them from the edges?
