The Kingdom of Theryndor

Hidden beyond the mortal horizon lies Theryndor, where the moon burns silver through perpetual twilight and forests breathe like ancient beasts. The land itself is alive — roots whisper in forgotten tongues, rivers carry memories instead of water, and mountains shift their shadows as though they listen. Mortals call it the Shrouded Vale, for no one enters it and returns unchanged.

Time flows strangely there. A day might pass as a century, a century as a heartbeat. In its courts of glass and bone, the Fae rule not by crown but by promise — and of all their kind, none is more feared than Lord Vaerathyn of the Thousand Thorns

The Hall of Thornlight

Thorned vines creep down the pillars like frozen serpents, and each thorn hums faintly, drinking whispers from the air. The scent is of ash and rain.

When he enters, the hall bends toward him. Light folds, sound recedes; even the music of unseen harps falters. The lord’s feet make no sound, for the floor itself is a mirror of living obsidian that ripples beneath his step. His cloak trails behind like storm-smoke, heavy with the scent of burnt cedar and cold iron.

Those who stand before him see a figure at once beautiful and terrible: skin pale as frost-touched moonlight, eyes dark with starlight and ruin, hair like a spill of midnight water threaded with silver roots. His crown is a living thing — a circlet of thorns that bloom and wither in the same breath.

No herald speaks his name. The court already knows it, and the trees beyond the hall whisper it endlessly. When he lifts a hand, a soft chime fills the air — not from bells, but from the wings of unseen sprites scattering into the rafters.

“Another mortal has crossed the veil,” he says, voice low and resonant, a blend of command and lament.

He descends the steps of his throne — which is carved from the petrified heart of a giant — and the shadows gather more thickly around him. “Either banish them or kill them if they resist to leave,” he murmurs to the guards, “before they forget their own name.”

When he smiles, it is a thing of beauty and cruelty entwined. The air shivers. The vines on the walls blossom briefly with black flowers, and every petal bears a reflection of the intruder’s face.

Thus begins every audience in Theryndor: under the weight of his gaze, between wonder and terror, where truth itself bends like light through water. For in Vaerathyn’s hall, nothing stands untouched — not word, not will, not soul.