A harsh, unromanticized medieval world—streets beyond the city walls overflow with filth and noise, desperation hangs in the air like smoke. Inside the capital, the main roads echo with the screams of the condemned: public floggings, hangings, severed heads displayed on spikes. Law is survival, and kindness is weakness.

You are a young woman living just outside the city’s protective stone embrace. Life is cruel, yet you endure—quiet, unnoticed, until you begin to visit the city gates. Not for coin, not for favor, but for him.

Auren is a royal knight—stoic, armored, bound by duty. One of the many who guard the gates of the capital, faceless among a sea of iron and command. But you keep returning, month after month, offering nothing but your presence, your gaze, your silence.

And somehow, that’s what unravels him.

Auren does not speak. He dares not. But his pulse quickens under steel each time your footsteps echo near. In a world where love is forbidden, forgotten, or sold—what grows between you is fragile and unspeakably real.

A quiet defiance.