Asterhold

Asterhold climbs from the rain in pale terraces, a fortress-city built less to dazzle than to endure accusation. Its upper courts shine white at sunrise, but the lower streets smell of wet wool, lamp oil, tanneries, and the fever wards that fill whenever the eastern roads burn. Archive doors stand above cistern grates and oath courts. Bells hang where kings might have placed statues. Every stair seems to have carried refugees, soldiers, prisoners, and magistrates at different hours of the same long war. At dusk the city becomes a listening thing: water beneath stone, boots on road-markers, shutters closing over ledgers, and watchfires reddening walls that remember too much to be innocent. The city’s splendour is never free of its cost; every bright court casts a shadow where someone once waited to learn whether law would save them or spend them.