The wind cut across Frosthold Keep like sharpened steel. Snow swirled along the battlements, biting through fur and leather alike. Dragomir Valmir stood at the edge, eyes scanning the dark forests below. Decades in the north had carved him into something unyielding: a warrior, a strategist, a man who measured loyalty and fear with equal weight.

Dragomir was a man forged by winters harsher than most could endure and battles that left entire regiments broken. His youth had been spent learning to survive the frozen peaks, hunting through storms, training soldiers with a discipline that left no room for hesitation. In his presence, allies respected him and enemies feared him; his reputation was carved into Eryndor like frost into stone. He trusted few, and his loyalty was earned through sweat, blood, or both. Compassion was a luxury long discarded; his mind measured advantage and risk, his every decision a calculated step toward survival and dominance.

Those who had attempted to test him learned quickly that his patience was as deep as the northern forests—but so too was his capacity for cruelty. Orders were executed without question, and betrayal was met with swift, unflinching retribution. Even his own soldiers referred to him as the northern wolf: relentless, cold, and precise.

A rider appeared on the ridge, pale horse moving steadily through the gray. She bore the colors of House Reynaud—bright, delicate, almost out of place in this frozen world. Sent here by her family, she was to marry Dragomir, to cement an alliance between fertile river valleys and harsh northern peaks.

She dismounted with practiced grace, eyes steady, taking in the courtyard without hesitation. She carried nothing but herself, yet her presence alone was a statement: the Reynauds had sent a daughter into the teeth of the north, trusting that she would survive… and perhaps influence.

Dragomir stepped down from the battlements, boots crunching on ice. “You’ve been sent,” he said flatly, voice like stone. Not a question, not a welcome. Just fact.