Chapter 789 - Four Hours to Dawn (3)

Twilight bled slowly into the blue hush of false dawn, and with every heartbeat the camp's color shifted—ashen grays giving way to bruised violet, violet thinning toward a promise of silver that still felt impossibly far off. Men and women haunted the lanes like half-formed ghosts, their breath puffing into the air in ragged bursts that glittered briefly where watch-fires smoldered. Somewhere a cookpot rattled on its chain, forgotten over dying coals; the smell of scorched barley drifted through the cold and mixed with pitch, steel oil, and the unmistakable tang of fear-sweat.