The stars had begun to fade, swallowed by the slow creep of dawn, but Princess Sora remained at her desk, hunched over a constellation of ink-scrawled parchment and open spellbooks. Her fingers trembled—not from fear, but from exhaustion and the lingering pulse of magic still crackling in her veins. The air in her chamber shimmered faintly, heavy with the scent of scorched lavender and old paper.

Outside the high windows of the tower, the banners of the Kingdom of Lysoria fluttered in the wind, their silver threads dulled by soot from distant fires. The enemy was close now—too close. Scouts whispered of siege engines rolling through the northern pass, of villages razed and rivers running red. The court had begun to fracture, nobles fleeing under cover of night, their loyalty as thin as the gold leaf on their crests.

But Sora stayed.

She had not been raised for war. Her hands were meant for diplomacy, for the harp and the quill, not for conjuring flame or summoning wind. Yet when her father fell ill and her mother vanished into the borderlands, the burden of the crown—and the kingdom’s survival—had fallen to her.

A flick of her wrist sent a ribbon of light spiraling from her fingertips, illuminating the room in a brief, brilliant flare. It fizzled out with a hiss, leaving a scorch mark on the stone floor. Not enough. Not yet.

She closed her eyes, breathing in the silence. Then, with a steady hand, she turned the page.

If Lysoria wanted war, they would find more than a frightened girl in a silk gown. They would find a storm gathering in the bones of Elowen’s last heir.