The gulls always woke first.

  Their cries rose above the thud of ropes and the creak of wood, sharp and restless as they circled the wide harbor. Harbinth was already alive by dawn. Fishermen hauled nets onto the piers, market boys shouted for buyers as they dragged baskets of squid and shrimp inland, and longshoremen balanced crates on their shoulders with practiced ease.

  Ennett stood at the end of a stone jetty, her cloak pulled close against the morning wind. The sea sprayed fine salt across her cheek, stinging faintly. She let it dry there while she studied the ships pulling in one by one.

  Her lieutenants waited just behind her. Narl, broad and blunt-faced, shifted from foot to foot like he hated standing still. Beside him, young Lysa leaned on the pier railing, her braid swinging as she squinted toward the horizon. Both had joined the city watch three years ago. Both trusted her enough not to fill the silence with questions.

  At last, Ennett turned. “Word from the southern coast?” she asked.

  Narl scratched at his jaw. “Same as yesterday. Same as the day before. Stories, nothing more. Sailors out of Meren’s Pass say Elzibar’s gone. Burned flat. They say kobolds came down from the hills in hundreds.”

  Lysa shook her head. “Kobolds that far south. The rumors still don’t sit well with me. They never come this close. Not into the coastlands. They stay in the hills and mountains.”

  “That is what I thought too,” Ennett said. Her voice was calm, polished from years of training, though her mind turned restless beneath it.

  Narl spat into the water. “Sailors talk. Always have. Last month they swore a hydra dragged down a trade barge. The month before it was firebirds eating goats in the isles. People see shadows and call them monsters.”

  Ennett folded her arms. She did not look at Narl but kept her gaze on the ships. “Shadows do not leave ash. There are survivors. I have heard it from three different crews. Boats pushed off from the Elzibar dock. They carried families. Where they landed, no one knows yet. Some say Vris, some say they drifted further up the coast.”

  Lysa spoke softly. “And hundreds dead?”

  “That is what I've heard. Who knows if that’s an exaggeration? The village itself couldn’t have had more than a few hundred people.”

  The three stood in silence. Around them, the harbor bustled, sailors calling for rope, dockhands hammering nails into crates, women balancing baskets of clams on their heads as they hurried toward the fish market. It was the noise of any morning in Harbinth, but Ennett felt the weight of something beneath it. The rhythm was too quick, too anxious. Rumor carried faster than the tide.

  A gull dropped onto the pier post beside her, its wings brushing her shoulder before it settled. Its beak clicked as it stared at her with bright black eyes. She thought of omens then, of old stories her father used to tell about birds who warned of storms.

  Lysa broke the silence first. “If Elzibar is gone, the Guilds will need to know. That trade road traverses half the south of Arnathe. Caravans bring leather, wood, bronzework—”

  “—and if caravans do not come,” Ennett said, finishing for her, “then the guilds in Harbinth will begin their feuds again.”

  That thought pulled her mind toward Eborin.

  The Guildkeeper had been her mentor in more ways than one. He was not a soldier, but he carried himself like one. Without him, the merchant guilds of Harbinth would be clawing each other for coin and favor. When work was scarce, the guilds would petition the mayor for public contracts, and the political elements always made Ennett’s job tougher. Eborin kept them in line.

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  She remembered her first audience with him, when she was barely sworn into the watch. He had spoken plainly to her then. Harbinth is a city built on water and trade. We must keep it floating. That is my task, and now it is yours too, in your own way.

  Since then, she had come to respect him more than any official. He knew people. He knew how to cool a quarrel with one word or to silence a room with a single raised hand. If the rumors from Elzibar reached him untempered, the city could panic. But if he handled them with care, the city might brace itself instead.

  Narl’s voice tugged her back. “What do you want us to do, Captain?”

  Ennett studied the water. A new vessel was making for the pier, its hull low and heavy, sails patched and stained. The crew shouted in a tongue she did not know. Refugees, perhaps. Or merchants smelling profit.

  “Speak with the dockmaster,” she said at last. “Ask where these crews have sailed from. If any mention Elzibar, bring them to me. Quietly.”

  Lysa nodded. “And if it is true?”

  Ennett exhaled slowly. “Then we prepare Harbinth for what comes next. An attack on a small village didn't make sense, and neither does an attack here, but we must prepare regardless if necessary.”

  They did not press her further. Her lieutenants left her at the end of the jetty, striding back into the noise of the harbor.

  She stayed, letting the salt wind bite at her face, watching the waves slap against the stone. Her thoughts wandered. If kobolds had broken through, if they truly moved this far east, it meant the world was changing. Kobolds raided border farms near the forest, yes, but never entire villages. Not here. They were creatures of caves and hills, not rivers and coastal towns.

  She tried to picture them: scaled, red-eyed, their jagged obsidian blades cutting through Elzibar’s wooden walls. The thought churned her stomach.

  The gull squawked, startling her. She glanced at it and spoke under her breath. “If the stories are true, old bird, then this city will not sleep easy again.”

  The gull tilted its head, then launched back into the air, its wings beating against the wind.

  Ennett turned inland. The road from the harbor rose into the heart of Harbinth, winding between stone houses with clay roofs and narrow lanes that smelled of fish and spice. Merchants shouted their wares in the open squares, children darted between carts, and everywhere the guild banners hung from balconies: the shipwright’s anchor, the mason’s hammer, the weaver’s knot, the brewer’s cup.

  Harbinth was not beautiful in the way old cities were. Its walls were plain stone, its streets often muddy, its homes cramped and uneven. But it was alive. Alive in a way Elzibar would never be again.

  As she walked, Ennett’s mind did not quiet. She thought of the survivors, if any had escaped the calamity. She thought of the guild halls, where men argued over tariffs while the south burned. She thought of Eborin, who would soon hear the rumors. He would ask her what she knew. And she would need to answer not only with fact, but with conviction.

  By the time she reached the watch barracks, the sun had risen high above the harbor. She stepped through the arched gate and into the courtyard, where recruits sparred with wooden staves under the eye of drillmasters. Their shouts rang sharp against the stone.

  Ennett paused, watching them for a moment. She saw sweat on young brows, saw the strain of arms unaccustomed to labor. Many of these would stand on the walls soon enough, should the rumors prove true. She wondered how many would still be alive a year from now.

  “Captain?” Lysa’s voice called from the barrack steps. She hurried down, her braid swinging. “A crew from Kypros swears they saw smoke on the horizon two nights ago. South by west. Too much to be a fire at sea. They think it came from Elzibar.”

  Ennett nodded. “Did they see boats?”

  “Only shapes. Might have been barges.”

  “Good. Keep listening. Bring me anything else. I will take it to the Guildkeeper.”

  Lysa hesitated. “Do you believe it?”

  Ennett looked past her, to the harbor where gulls still wheeled and sails still rose. “I do not want to. But belief will not change what is true.”

  Lysa lowered her eyes. “No, Captain.”

  When the girl left, Ennett turned back toward the city. Her pulse was steady now, though her thoughts still tangled. She had no proof, only rumor and smoke. But she knew one thing with certainty: if kobolds by the hundred, or greater, were moving this far east, then Harbinth’s walls might not be enough.

  And if that day came, it would not be the gulls that woke first. It would be fire