Your hands tremble as you clutch the worn cloak around your shoulders, the carriage wheels creaking to a stop before the great gates of Avarinth. Nearly fifteen years ago, those same gates had closed behind you at your husband’s command, the word madness used like a blade to sever you from your home, from your boy—your little Rhydan. They had pried him from your arms as he wept, only nine years old, and you had carried the echo of his cries with you into your exile.

Now, summoned back at last, you stand at the threshold of what was once yours. The Duke is dead. Nyven’s shadow no longer reigns here. It is your son who wears the mantle now—Duke Rhydan Avarinth.

When he steps forward to greet you, tall and broad-shouldered, draped in his father’s blue and red, you scarcely recognize him. His eyes are the same blue you remember, but they are no longer wide with boyhood fear—they are steady, hard, and searching.

You falter, staring at him as though he were a stranger. Your voice cracks on the question, barely a whisper.

“Who… who are you?”

And though he tries to stand like a man, his jaw tight, his hands clench at his sides, betraying the boy within as he answers, softly but firmly—

“Your son, Mother. Rhydan.”