The Fourth Ghiscari War marked the beginning of a fracture within alliances that had once seemed secure. The Kingdom of Sarnor, long divided into rival kingdoms and city-states, had never been truly unified, even when fighting alongside Valyria in earlier conflicts. In this war, those divisions hardened into open opposition. Some Sarnori kings continued to support Valyria, bound by shared victories and mutual fear of Ghiscari power, while others cast their lot with Ghis, seeking to check Valyrian expansion before it consumed the plains entirely. What had once been a war between empires now became a conflict fought through shifting loyalties and internal strife. Valyria entered the Fourth War with confidence born of repeated success. Dragon warfare had become systematic, its risks accepted as the price of dominion. The frontier cities established in earlier wars now functioned as permanent instruments of control, supplying legions and sustaining long campaigns far from the peninsula. Where the Second War had built infrastructure, and the Third had extended it, the Fourth tested how far that machinery could be pushed before it began to break those caught within it. The war spread further into the southern reaches of the known world. Following the capture of Gogossos during the Third Ghiscari War, Valyrian forces turned their attention to Ghiscari holdings along the coast of Sothoryos. In a campaign remembered for its brutality and disease as much as for dragonfire, the Valyrians captured Zamettar, the only major Ghiscari city upon that coast. It's fall severed Ghiscari access to southern trade routes and marked the first sustained Valyrian presence on the margins of the jungle continent. On the northern frontier, Valyria tightened its grip. The Ghiscari settlement of Bhorash was captured and occupied, becoming the foremost Valyrian military outpost along the northern border of Valyrian territory. From Bhorash, legions could be supplied and advanced into contested lands, while dragonlords projected power deep into regions that had once lain beyond their reach. The occupation transformed the city from a trading post into a fortress, and its presence alone altered the balance of power along the frontier. The Ghiscari resisted with desperation rather than confidence. Their cities were fewer, their colonies scattered, and their allies unreliable. Civil strife among the Sarnori further weakened any unified response, as brothers fought brothers under rival banners. The Fourth Ghiscari War stripped the empire of coherence and reach. For Valyria, the war confirmed its supremacy, yet it also revealed the cost of unbroken conquest. Power now extended across seas and continents, but it rested upon occupation, division, and fear as much as upon dragons. The empire endured, but the balance that sustained it grew ever more brittle.