The Brazen Watcher

A single toppled Vallen Sentinel lying full-length across a terrace below the seat — dead or dormant, weather-greened, the size of a cottage — used by runners as a windbreak and meeting-stone.

No one knows when it fell or why this one does not walk. Its bronze plating has gone the green of old copper and the boreal lichen has colonised its joints, but the carved Imperium sigils on its chest-plates have never worn away. Children of Greywater dare each other to touch it at night. The runners eat their lunch in its lee.