WHAT COULD NOT REMAIN

The city didn't fall all at once. It gave way in pieces — and for three days, from the mountain refuge, Sals watched it happen like something being erased one stroke at a time rather than destroyed in a single blow.

The first night took the harbor. Ships that had ridden out storms for generations came apart against their own moorings, timber that had crossed real oceans reduced to kindling against the docks it had always come home to. By dawn nothing floated that hadn't been built to.