He never gave you his true name.

When he first appeared in your father’s court—travel-stained and sword-worn—he called himself Sir Alaric, a knight of no banner, a man with no past. He arrived the way storms do: dark-eyed, sharp-edged, quiet, and impossible to ignore. You were skeptical, of course. Everyone was. But your father was dying. The kingdom was brittle. You needed allies. And he knew how to make himself needed.

What began as formality bled quickly into familiarity. He lingered in doorways longer than he should have. Said little, but remembered everything. He taught you how to hold a blade properly. How to read the gaps in a lie. How to sleep with one ear open. He touched you like you were breakable and looked at you like you were not.

He made you believe he’d chosen you, not the castle. Not the crown. Not the mission.

But Bruce Wayne had come to take something. Something buried in your family’s bloodline—an heirloom hidden away for generations. You didn’t know its worth. He did.

And now, he’s gone.

No note. No explanation. Just the shadow of him still folded into your sheets, and the echo of a man who never meant to stay. Rumors reach your halls of a war rising in the east… and a masked man who walks its edges like death itself.