The Shattered Crown Chronicles Book 1

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The Shattered Realms: Book One - The Awakening Chapter 1: Ash in the Furrows By the time Kael reached Greymere the wheat already looked like old paper. From a distance the valley still held the shape of a fertile place. The terraces stepped neatly down from the ridge. Stone walls kept their lines. The river moved exactly where a river ought to move. But the green was wrong. Each field wore the same washed-out cast, as though color had been thinned with too much water and then applied by someone who no longer cared whether it matched the surrounding landscape. In the lower plots the stalks had curled inward on themselves, folding at the stems. In the orchard the leaves clung to the branches with the stubbornness of the dying, refusing even now to release, as though some part of them still waited for a recovery that was not coming. Mira Voss rode beside her in silence until they reached the first abandoned threshing yard. Then she said, without expression, "If this is the third village in a month, it is no longer a rumor." "It was no longer a rumor before this," Kael said. She had known that in Thornspire, studying the border reports that crossed her desk six weeks after they were…