Ashen Herald

THE EMBERFORGE HOLLOW

The Emberforge Hollow still arms a war that ended a generation ago, and someone must carry the dispatches. The Ashen Herald burned on its rounds and did not stop walking: a cinder-cored messenger trailing embers through the forge-galleries, delivering muster orders to garrisons of slag. It announces every intruder to soldiers who will never come, then attends to the trespass itself, formally.