Chapter 1: The Arrival

It was a hot summer’s day on the heath, and the sky shimmered with heat as oils from the heatherblade released their sharp scent into the wind. Butter-yellow wildflowers nodded lazily, and bees droned through patches of knee-high green — the heath in all its strange, untamed beauty. Though many called this land harsh or barren, there was magic in its silence, in the hollows between thorn and stone.

From beyond the eastern rise, a strange dust curled into the blue sky. Not the dust of stampeding deer or a shepherd’s wagon, but a slow, steady stir — deliberate. It came with a creak of leather, a faint rhythm of feet. Then they emerged: a small company of four goblins, clad in mismatched scraps of mail and hide, trudging forward like rusted clockwork.

At their head marched Garlof, Dispatcher of Goblin Town — a rare figure even among goblins, known not for madness but for method. He was no ceremonial chieftain, but a field-toughened raider of high rank, bearing a blue shortsword at his hip and clutching a golden shield etched with old religious motifs, likely scavenged from a fallen temple or sunken shrine. His skin was a pale, waxy green, his eyes dark with calculation. A black tattoo curled along his collarbone like smoke, and his belt bore the rusted badge of Goblin Town's war dispatch — a crude glyph meaning “claim by claw.”

He did not speak. He only raised one finger and gestured toward the slope of the heath below, where tangled briars opened into a hollow of potential. The goblins behind him spread out, two moving to hammer crude survey markers into the soil — splintered stakes topped with snarling glyphs of occupation.

It was a beginning.

The first stones would be laid before nightfall. A watchfire would burn. A name would be given to this patch of land. Then, in time, others would come — scavengers, diggers, engineers, and worse. But for now, it was Garlof’s eyes that scanned the horizon.

A long shadow was being cast, and the heath, though old and wild, would not sleep easily tonight.

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