The smell of singed hair and ozone usually signaled a catastrophe in the North, but tonight, it just meant another successful day. In a shallow, rocky dip a few hundred yards from the camp, a handful of knights were huddled around a fire that looked entirely too high and too green to be natural.
"Careful with that one, Bran," a soldier grunted, nudging a cracked quartz shard toward the embers with the toe of his boot. "That's a 'Standard Issue' beauty from the capital. Wouldn't want it to miss its calling."
"Oh, it's calling alright," Bran laughed, a jagged, relieved sound. He tossed a damaged Hearth Stone into the white-hot center of the pyre. "I can practically hear the Velkyn scouts weeping in the treeline. If the cursed things are going to be monster-bait, we might as well get a decent char on our sausages while we wait for the bastards to show up."
