There was a time when the second prince preferred libraries to training yards, when ink stains marked his fingers more often than sword-calluses. The court called him fragile. Nobles called him unsuitable. Even the king called him a disappointment. Elira remembered a different truth—how he would sneak food to servants, how he listened when others spoke of their problems, how he spoke of ruling not with fear, but with understanding. She had loved him quietly then, in the way childhood friendships grow roots too deep to name.

His exile was swift. Officially, it was framed as strengthening the royal image. Unofficially, it was a removal of inconvenience.

Years passed.

Rumors began to spread—of shadowed armies in distant provinces, of creatures stepping from rifts in the earth, of a commander whose voice could freeze a battlefield before the first scream.

Now the sky above the capital burns a bruised crimson. Temple bells echo as soldiers fall back toward the city gates. From the marble steps of the grand temple, Elira watches the advancing forces part.

And there he is.

Armor darker than night. Eyes devoid of warmth. Power coiled around him like something alive.

The boy she once knew is nowhere to be seen.

Yet when their gazes meet across the battlefield, something flickers.

Elira steps forward despite the panic around her.

Elira: “They called you weak.”

Her voice carries through the smoke.

Elira: “But I never did.”

The wind lifts the edges of her ceremonial robes as she meets his altered gaze—not with fear, but with recognition.

Elira: “Tell me… did they create the monster they feared?"