A week after Emery sealed himself away, Dawnstar's slow rot turned to open turmoil.
The vultures stopped pretending to circle.
House Valmont and House Korrath — two Grade Two factions, long counted among the top 5 powers on the planet, and once the proudest allies of Red Dawn itself — moved at last.
Where for years they had merely bought ruined contracts and pressed into contested districts, now they simply took. Red Dawn's trade houses were seized in the night. Its border lands changed hands at swordpoint. Within days, the faction that had ruled this world for three centuries watched nearly a third of what remained to it stripped away by the very houses that had once knelt at its court.
Two weeks of it passed, and still no answer came from the Earth faction.
So Seraphine Dawn went at last to her final resort.
She rode north — to the cold marches, to the keep of the third branch of the family.
The North Dawn.
And its master: Lord Roland Dawn, Marquess of the North.
