Draithus

Draithus appears in Violet’s nightmare as a city threatened by blue fire climbing the hillside toward its walls and consuming fleeing civilians. At this point, the image is a catastrophic dream rather than a confirmed event.

The retreating western line puts Draithus under urgent threat. Violet thinks dark wielders may reach its walls within weeks or fly straight there, and Xaden confirms the city has weeks before an attack.

Garrick reports that Theophanie and her forces have reached Draithus’s walls, turning the city’s expected danger into an active threat.

When Violet’s force arrives, Draithus is under active siege: gray wyvern cover the eastern fields, dragons and gryphons defend near the walls, and evacuees pour from the western gate. Theophanie separates the city’s survival from Mira’s when she says she promised Draithus would stand, not that Mira would live.

The fighting moves from siege pressure into a direct battle for the city. Dragons and gryphons hover above the walls while enormous cross-bolts fire into the wyvern cloud, and Violet sends Xaden and Dain toward Draithus because she believes the defenders are close to running out of ammunition.

Draithus stays under battlefield pressure while the pass defense unfolds. Cath reports that every dragon in the city has been forced down by the windstorm, and Rhiannon worries that the defenders beyond the valley must be badly outnumbered.

Wyvern, dragons, and gryphons fill the sky above the spiral tower, and a horde launches from a mile outside the city gates. After Violet’s lightning barrage, surviving wyvern breach the city’s airspace, and Theophanie sends a precise tornado toward Draithus that Violet believes could tear the city apart.

The battle reaches inside Draithus itself. Houses burn, civilians scream, wyvern and gryphon bodies crash into rooflines, and venin begin draining the city walls while fighting spreads through the streets and key defensive points.

While Violet fights Theophanie away from the city, Draithus remains the target of the tornado and the surrounding wyvern assault. Wings stay locked in battle above it, and Xaden’s darkness later envelops the city after Sgaeyl is endangered.

Xaden’s shadows surge over Draithus and end every wyvern in the air and on the ground. By the end of the battle, Sgaeyl reports that the wards have been completed and now extend as far as the city, but not beyond it.

Draithus serves as one of the route markers for returning to Poromiel; Violet’s group plans to come ashore between Cordyn and Draithus to reduce contact with dark wielders.

As the allied line retreats, Draithus lies close enough to the front for Mira to see it from the line. The danger is immediate enough that Bodhi wants to leave school to patrol there.

The city sits at the southwestern edge of an intermontane plateau that spans a couple dozen miles. Peaks surround the plateau, and Draithus can be reached only through winding valleys, by the western river toward the Arctile Ocean, or by air.

Draithus has tall walls on a raised plateau and a central spiraling tower.

Snow-topped mountains surround the city, and a field lies before it.

A pass leads out of the city, and the eastern field becomes the exposed side of the approach when civilians flee upward from Draithus.

Inside the city, the streets are narrow enough to prevent dragons such as Cruth from landing. The battle also identifies major internal points including the walls, tower, turret, armory routes, and town square.

Maren regards Draithus as a possible home or refuge for her parents after Zolya falls, comparing it with Newhall as a place they might have gone.

Draithus receives refugees quickly enough to strain its supplies after the Krovlan losses spread and Suniva falls. Mira and Garrick are both sent there, which makes the city a personal concern for Violet as well as a strategic one.

During the battle, Draithus still contains both active defenders and civilians while Xaden is pulled away from its walls.