The Red Banner

Across the mountain from Wyrm's Jaws, four more orphans have built a family out of the only things war left them: discipline, hunger, and each other.

Kael, Torren, Mira, and Lira have grown up in the shadow of chained dragons and harder men, in a village that calls its cruelty survival. When the elders raise the red banner and call for war against the soft village across the peaks, none of them have reason to doubt the story they were raised on.

They march anyway.

But the truth waiting on the far side of the Wyrmspine is older and crueler than any banner was built to carry, and the mountain remembers what both villages have chosen to forget. As two found families collide beneath a guardian's wings, the old fable of "Fire or Ash" continues.

Some bonds are forged in war.

Others are the reason it ends.