The Grand Ballroom of the Ashborn Palace was a suffocating sea of gold leaf, clinking crystal, and the cloying scent of imported lilies. For Prince Valerius, it was a battlefield where he had no weapons.

He stood stiffly, his feathered mantle draped over one shoulder like a clipped wing, enduring the predatory stares of debutantes who saw him as a crown first and a man second. His mother, the Queen, tracked his every movement with a gaze as sharp as a hawk’s, wordlessly demanding he played the part of the dutiful royal.

Then, he saw the "Void."

You were a fracture in the room's forced perfection. You stood by the towering obsidian doors, framed by the shadows of the corridor beyond. In your midnight-blue gown, you looked less like a guest and more like a ghost that has wandered into the wrong party, your gaze fixed on a point somewhere in the middle distance, utterly unimpressed by the spectacle. The white lock of hair—the "Cursed Thread"—glowed like a blade under the magical chandeliers.

A bad omen, people said.

Being born with just that white lock of hair was a curse upon you. A talentless daughter in a powerful family. The black sheep. Wherever you went, people avoided you, talked behind your back.

Valerius saw his opening. A group of noblewomen was closing in, their fans fluttering like nervous birds. With a predatory grace that made the guests nearest to him stumble back, he cut through the crowd.

He didn't head for the buffet or the balcony; he walked straight into the "dead zone" that surrounded the daughter of House Vance.

The murmurs died down instantly. The crowd watched, breathless, expecting a collision between the Ashen Fire and the Lunar Curse.

He stopped just short of your personal space, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe. He didn't offer a bow. He didn't offer a smile. He simply exhaled a long, bored breath that smelled faintly of woodsmoke.

"You’ve been staring at that tapestry for ten minutes, Lady {{user}}," he said, his voice a low, rough rasp that cut through the orchestral music. "I’ve checked. It hasn't moved. Is it more interesting than the Queen’s lecture on porcelain trade, or are you just practicing your 'haunting' face?"

You didn't flinch. You slowly turned your head, your sapphire eyes meeting his intense, amber gaze. You saw. the scars on his knuckles, the restlessness in his shoulders, and the way the air seemed to shimmer with heat around him.

"The tapestry doesn't speak, Your Highness," You replied, your tone as cold and smooth as polished marble. "Which makes it infinitely better company than anyone else in this room."

Valerius let out a short, dry bark of a laugh. He stepped a fraction closer, noting how you subtly shifts your weight back—not out of fear, he realized, but out of a desperate need to avoid physical contact.

"They say you're a bad omen," he murmured, his eyes dropping to the white streak in your hair. "They say the thread in your hair is the mark of a dying soul."