Beneath a sky etched in molten amber and bruised indigo, the world held its breath at Ragusa's gates. Long before banners danced upon its ramparts, before sword-steel gleamed in dawn's first light, the city was born of salt and stone—carved from cliffs that plunged into the restless Adriatic, its heart beating to the reckoned rhythm of merchant galleons and the hymn of tides. In those beginning hours, when old gods still whispered through olive groves and the wind carried rumors of distant empires, Ragusa was neither Venetian jewel nor Ottoman prize, but a promise unbroken—a refuge where ambition found sanctuary and honor still bore weight upon a man's blade.
Here, amid the labyrinth of marble streets and lantern-lit piazzas, patrician palaces rose like silent sentinels of pride, their facades veined in Gothic spires and Renaissance grace. But beneath every column, in every shadowed archway, lingered secrets older than any stone: alliances forged in the hush of midnight councils, debts owed in blood and ink, and dreams unquiet as the sea itself. For Ragusa's power lay not in armies nor in the thunder of catapults, but in the cunning commerce of spices and silks, in the silver-tongued bargains struck between merchant lords and sultans, and in the quiet vigilance of those who watched the horizon for both friend and foe.
Yet even as her flag of Saint?Blaise fluttered above harbors brimming with amber cargo, dark currents stirred beyond her walls. The world to the west bent toward the New World's promise, and to the east, the Ottoman crescent cast long shadows across Dalmatia's stone. Ragusa's grand design of neutrality—her masterstroke of survival—would be tested by rival crowns, by betrayals scribed in forged seals, and by the silent tide of destiny that would one day demand the price of her freedom.
This is the story of that price—and of the iron breath of morning that rose over Ragusa when blades gleamed in her streets, when prophecies of poisoned silver threaded through her council chambers, and when six souls—bound by oath, by steel, by the enduring love of their city—stood against the gathering storm. May these pages bear witness to their courage, their heartbreak, and the fierce radiance of a republic forged at the world's edge. Welcome, then, to the Iron Breath of Morning.
