Round 1

Jeane strode forward with the confidence of one who knows her power, crimson eyes scanning the ruined city ahead. The air smelled of decay and something deeper—potential, perhaps, or corruption. The abandoned church stood to her right, its steeple a broken finger pointing at the darkening sky. She smiled, a slow curve of lips that spoke of ambition and calculation. This place was ripe for reclamation, for shaping.

Silra paused mid-step, her hand drifting toward the dagger at her hip. The raven's fall wasn't an accident—the wind here carried too many currents, too much wrongness. Something in the church had teeth. The cloaked figures ahead were too organized for looters. City guard? Cultists? Didn't matter which—all bad options for a first contact. Jeane just strolled past like she owned the place already, and that was either brilliant arrogance or suicidal stupidity. Probably both.

Sister Hale moved forward slowly, her eyes scanning the ruins ahead. The air was thick with decay, but beneath it she sensed something else—an old magic, sleeping but not dead. The abandoned church caught her attention immediately; its broken steeple seemed to reach for a sky turning storm-dark. Something in that structure called to her faith, not as sanctuary but as challenge. The falling raven was an ill omen—something within had disturbed the natural order. But her duty was clear: reclaim this place from corruption.

The road before them wound into Gravehill through a corridor of skeletal trees. Their branches clawed at the dying light like grasping fingers. The city itself was a wound in the landscape—a great scar where stone met earth. An atmosphere of decay hung heavy, but beneath it something else stirred.