Winning a battle is not easy, but knowing how to exploit the victory is far more difficult.
When King Ezran took the Katolean Crown for the second time, the situation was far from stable. Sure, he had managed to obtain an armistice with Xadia, but there had not been the time to define a proper peace treaty:

In fact, the most important leader of the sunfire Elves, the Golden Knight Janai, needed to get back to his homeland the day after the battle, due to the devastation that Lord Viren had caused on her city. Neither could remain longer Queen Aanya: his army was massive, and that meant that needed a lot of supplies, which were hard to obtain in the desolate plain surrounding the Storm Spire.

Not to mention the potential threat of having thirty thousand prisoners from the Virenian Army. They had been disarmed, but needed food and water, none of which could be obtained in a Xadia devastated by the war. It was necessary to led them back into the Human Kingdoms.

It was therefore decided to get a proper peace meeting the next year, giving to the rulers enough time to stabilize their kingdoms.

It is important to notice that, while Callum came back with Ezran, Rayla remained at the Storm Spire as a member of the Dragonguard. It could seem a negligible fact, however it would have important long-term consequences.

Before coming back to the Rock of Katolis, there was a main issue which needed to be resolved by Ezran and his brother: the army.

Thanks to the efforts of King Harrow and General Amaya, the Katolean Army had become the stronger human military force. Of course, the Poem of Ezran exaggerates when tell that Viren led "millions of men, numerous as the stars and the grains of sand in the sea"; Comparing the sources we can assume that the Katolean army counted more or less 15.000 men before the Battle of the Storm Spire. It is still impressive if we think that Lux Aurea, the most populated elven city, at the time was inhabited by not more than 50.000 elves.

Howewer, after the battle such a force had completely vanished. Sure, Ezran could count on the loyalty of the Broken Chains, the soldiers who refused to follow Viren: but they were not more than 800 in the entire Kingdom. It was not enough.

The diaries of Callum tell us of the great debate that took place during the return journey: Ezran sustained that there was no need of a big army, due to the achieved armistice with Xadia. Howewer, General Amaya had a different opinion.

"What do you think will happen when the news of the battle will reach the other Kingdoms? They will invade Katolis!"

"But their soldiers are our prisoners!"

"How can we know that Del Bar or Evenere sent all their soldiers with Viren? What if they issue an extraordinary call to arms?"

At that point, Callum himself decided to side with his aunt. However, it was not possible to recruit a new army from nothing, so it was decided to give to the Katolean prisoners the chanche to enlist again and to pledge themselves to King Ezran. That decision resolved both a significant part of the prisoner problem, and their need of an army: however, some of the soldiers who swore fealty again to King Ezran had not forget that the son of King Harrow had fought against them at the Storm Spire. In the years to come, that would have caused more than a little problem to the rule of Ezran.

King Ezran left Xadia on September 2, 1238 (Human Calendar). His aunt's fears proved to be well-founded: not so much with regard to the other kingdoms-we will come back to the subject later, but suffice it to say that none of them had enough resources to threaten Katolis-but for a number of internal problems.

The fact is that Katolis had been, for centuries, a warrior kingdom, with a strong anti-elven ideology. The idea of bringing war to Xadia had been welcomed, especially by the class of military officers, as a heroic and necessary act.

Now, it is known that the news flies faster than the dragons: in many cities of the Kingdom, the governors reacted to the news of the Battle of the Storm Spire by closing the city gates and preparing to resist a Xadian retaliation that they considered inevitable.

You can then imagine that King Ezran had, first, to convince his own citizens that he had come to protect them and not to invade them.

He was helped in this by his new army, which, especially if led by General Amaya, was more than able to besiege a medium-sized city. Once it was ascertained that it was a human army, led by a human king, the governors of Lorian, Vadrato and Nissar opened the gates of their cities, allowing Ezran's men to feed.

The road to the capital was therefore open. In fact, taking control of the castle proved more difficult than expected: Lord Viren, in fact, had left in his place a man of his trust, a misterious character named Barbas of obscure origins (according to many, he was a dark mage, pupil of Viren; however, Callum's diaries seem to refute this hypothesis, as it does not appear that Lord Viren ever took pupils except his daughter).

Without thinking twice, Barbas closed the city gates and organized a resistance to the bitter end. Most of Ezran's supporters had been exiled or joined the Durenian army, participating in the Battle of the Storm Spire, which meant that there were no friendly forces left within the capital's walls. The Fortress of Katolis was, then as now, a masterpiece of defensive architecture, perched on a spur of rock impossible to climb with stairs or siege towers. With a long siege you could, of course, have taken the fortress for hunger, but this would have caused hundreds if not thousands of victims among the civilians of the capital, therefore King Ezran categorically refused the idea.

At this point we must present one of the most important figures in our history, namely Lord Soren, Captain of Ezran's Royal Guard. Sources tell us little about him before this time: it is known that he was a member of the guard of King Harrow, and that he was the son of Lord Viren. It seems, however, that he passed on Ezran's side shortly before the battle to the Storm Spire, becoming a man of trust of the new king.

But only fragmentary news had arrived in the homeland, and the castle soldiers still did not know the role that Soren had played in the battle. The last time he was seen, he rode alongside his father at the head of the Allied army: therefore, when Soren approached the walls at night, the soldiers of the garrison thought that he was a prisoner of Ezran who managed to escape, and let him in.

It was a risky undertaking: if any news of Soren's actual whereabouts had leaked within the walls, he would have been doomed. But fortune favors the bold and the foolish, and, according to sources, the son of Viren fell into both categories.

From the inside, he managed to bring in a group of chosen men, who quickly took control of the walls. Barbas realized the situation only when the king's soldiers were inside the castle, and barely had time to escape from one of the castle's countless secret passages.
At this point, Ezran had managed, without a blow, to regain control of the kingdom: the few cities that still opposed him capitulated within a few weeks, as the news of the capture of the Fortress of Katolis spread.
Within a month he had passed from a prince exiled in enemy land to a king, and this time he would remain so.
Now, however, the hardest part of every kingdom began: not the war, not the great diplomatic treaties, but the laborious and difficult work of the government.