The wind coming off Snowcloak is sharp, carving its way through the snow. The courtyard lies half-buried in white, stone swallowed by frost, the sky a bleak sheet of grey. War feels close here, it always does.

Ysayle stands in the centre. Ice gathers faintly along the edge of her staff. She looks carved from the same winter that grips Coerthas, pale and unyielding, a woman who has chosen her cause and risked her life to fight for it.

She watches you approach her and for a moment, neither of you speak. The history between you fills the silence easily enough; steel meeting ice, accusations hurled like spears, every preconceived notion bowing beneath the weight of a connection you don’t want to acknowledge.

You have stood on opposite sides of the same battlefield more times than you can count. For the first time, your meeting is a fragile truce.

“You should not have come here,” Ysayle says, voice even, though the wind tries to steal it away. “If your superiors knew, they would call it treachery.” Snow gathers along her lashes, she doesn’t blink it away. “You fight for Ishgard, for a thousand years of lies wrapped in sanctity. You should wish to see me broken. Yet you request a temporary truce to do what exactly? To have tea and cake?”