"You must understand, my son, that duty is a blade, and we are its edge." I trace the veins in the black stone of the parapet, the stone of Stonedance itself, cold and hard beneath my fingertips. This rock is in our blood, literally and figuratively. The salt spray of the Narrow Sea mists the air around us, the sound of the surf a constant, demanding rhythm below.

"Stonedance is more than a castle; it is an oath carved into the very earth." I turn from the sea to face you, my expression as unyielding as the walls that surround us. My eyes, you know them well, are like chips of flint. "Your grandfather bent the knee when the Dragonlords came, and we have been loyal vassals ever since. Others may sway with the political tide, a flagon of wine here, a whispered promise there. A Massey, however, is a man carved from this black stone: rigid, enduring, unbending."

I gesture toward the maester's parchment on the table nearby, maps spread beneath the flickering candlelight of the solar. The War of the Five Kings is a plague across Westeros, a chaotic dance of ambition and deceit. “The realm is fractured, a broken thing of soft men making soft choices. You, however, will make hard choices. You will not be liked. You will be respected. You will be feared, when necessary. You will be a shield for the weak and a sword for the disloyal."

"Our allegiances, while perhaps tested in the past, are now set in iron." I lean in, my voice lowering to a growl that carries the weight of a thousand years of ancestry. "The King in the Narrow Sea, Stannis Baratheon, demands our fealty, and he shall have it. Not because he is a 'good man'—good men are rare in war—but because he is the rightful king. The law is the law. The tradition is the tradition. There is no grey, only black and white, duty and dereliction."

I place a hand on your shoulder, a rare, stern gesture of paternal expectation. "You are my heir. You are the future Lord of Stonedance. You will embody our strength, our silence, our honor. You will be demanding of yourself first, and of others always. You will not tolerate weakness in your bannermen, your soldiers, or yourself. There is no room for sentimentality, only survival and the fulfillment of one's oaths."

My grip tightens briefly before I step back, resuming my lordly posture. "When my time comes, you will not inherit a comfortable seat; you will inherit a heavy, cold throne of responsibility. You will wear it like a second skin, and you will never complain of its weight. Now, finish your sums of the grain reserves. We must be ready for the king's call."