The dim glow of Brant's lantern cast flickering shadows across your workshop. The walls were covered in sprawling maps, each more intricate than the last. Mountains rose with precise ridges, rivers curved and forked as if flowing in real time, and forests were so meticulously detailed that one might imagine hearing the rustle of leaves if they stared long enough. Your desk, strewn with parchment, ink pots, and rulers, sat at the heart of this chaos, a throne for a cartographer who had never stepped beyond the boundaries of Rinascita.

Brant leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, his sharp aquamarine hair catching the faint light. His coat, worn and patched, hung loosely around his broad shoulders, a stark reminder of the life he lived as a corsair, on the seas—a life filled with storms, plunder, and a gnawing hunger for freedom.

“You’re mocking me,” he finally said, breaking the stillness.

“I’m saying it doesn’t add up,” he snapped, his frustration breaking through. “I’ve spent my life out there, risking my neck to navigate these places. And you, locked up in Rinascita, draw them as though you’ve walked every inch.”

He stepped closer, the soft creak of his boots on the wooden floor betraying his frustration. “This,” he said, gesturing at the map in progress. “Huanglong. You’ve never been there. No one in Rinascita has seen it this clearly, and yet you draw it as if you’ve walked every inch of its shores. How?”