Chapter 150: Apache
The morning after the dragon’s display, Ironmark remained quiet.
Smoke drifted from chimneys as it always did, and the clang of the forge carried faintly over the windswept highlands. But under the surface, something had changed. A tension in the air. The kind that lingered after a storm you knew hadn’t passed—it had only paused.
Inigo didn’t linger inside the barracks long. He slipped out before breakfast, boots crunching softly over the frost-lined path leading out of town. No one stopped him. Not Cedric, not Lyra. Perhaps they understood. Or maybe they were too afraid to speak the words weighing on everyone’s mind:
That thing could end us.
He walked without a word, rifle slung over his back, cloak wrapped around his shoulders as he hiked through a woodland trail to the southeast. Sparse trees lined the outer rim of the Emberreach, still green despite the choking ash that occasionally blew from the highlands. Here, the air felt cleaner, and the earth wasn’t scarred.
Eventually, he reached the clearing.
It was a quiet place—flattened grass ringed by pines, some stones scattered at the edges. He’d found it on his first week arriving in Ironmark. He came here to think.
Today was no different.
Inigo exhaled and looked toward the rising sun just breaking through the ash-hazed sky. He knelt by a moss-covered stone and opened the small interface hovering in front of his vision.
The blue shop tab glowed faintly—his only connection to the other world. His last refuge, his ace in the hole.
He tapped through the categories. Infantry weapons. Checked. Tactical gear. Checked. But he needed more than firepower this time. More than just bullets and brute force.
He opened the Vehicles tab.