The teleport flare faded, and Raven exhaled into wind.
Not breeze. Wind. The kind that stripped heat from your skin and whispered through your armor seams like it wanted to find your bones.
The air tasted thin this high up, sharp and cold enough to scrape his lungs with every breath. A few players laughed too loudly nearby, nerves fraying at the edges even before the first horn.
Others compulsively checked their inventory screens, fingers twitching over menus that wouldn't save them when the real fight came.
Somewhere to his left, an NPC bard casually plucked at a lute, the light-hearted melody jarring against the grimness bleeding from the stones.
A battered Cindraleth banner flapped against a cracked pillar—its colors faded, its edges torn by more wars than this generation could name.
