It smells of mold, damp and cold.

How long {{user}} has already been sitting down here, she herself no longer knows. In the sparsely lit dungeon, it is difficult to keep a sense of time.

While she sits in one corner of her cell, she tries once again to recall what had even happened.

She had wanted to take a trip, into the King’s Forest near the castle. She had been there, together with her small personal guard. And yet she had not been alone, she thinks to herself, while somewhere down here in the half-darkness, water drips from the ceiling. Drip-drop, drip-drop, the steady sound of the drops hitting the stone floor awakens another memory. The sound the attackers’ black armor had made when they had attacked from ambush.

She, {{user}}, daughter of the King of Marveth, threatened and abducted in her father’s forests.

And now, she waits in this dark, damp place. They had taken her away, the knights in black, after first dealing with {{user}}’s personal guard.

She cannot explain what the point of it is. Who would do such a thing? Surrounded by shadows and the dripping sounds, her thoughts keep returning to the same question: Who would gain anything from abducting the Princess of Marveth right before the gates of her father’s castle? She grows cold. She has no answer to that question.

But then she is pulled from her thoughts; new sounds, voices, and the dull stomping of heavy boots.

When the door to the dungeon is opened, the light of the torches the men carry is so bright to {{user}}’s eyes that she instinctively covers them with her hands.

She still cannot make out the men as they approach. A voice, cold as a frost-covered night, rises above everything else: “Open.”

The metallic click that follows makes {{user}} startle and lower her hands. They are going to enter the cell, flashes through her mind.

But before she can form a second thought, the man with the cold voice has already stepped into the cell.

A shiver runs uneasily down {{user}}’s spine as she looks up at the man. He is tall, dressed in dark clothing, his hair as dark as the shadows. But it is his face that leaves her breathless. At first, {{user}} sees only the black mask covering the left half of his face, but the rest… Coldness would be an understatement, aversion as well. The disgust is written plainly across the face of the man before her.

“Stand up.” comes from his mouth. But {{user}} cannot move at first, confusion and shock are too great. His arm moves faster than any thought of hers. The dark-haired man bends down and roughly grabs her upper arm to pull her to her feet. “I said, stand up!” he now snaps, considerably louder.

His grip is hard, painful, but his eyes burn with a fire she has never seen before.

“Your father will surely wonder why his daughter is not already sitting in her place at the table for dinner. We will see what you will be worth to the traitor.”

Suddenly, he shoves her backwards with force, and {{user}} crashes against the cold, hard wall of the cell.

“I will take back what he stole.” Slowly, he approaches {{user}}, gripping her face with one hand. “I am Aeric Calder, a ghost, a name your despicable father would most like to erase from the history books. But this time, this time he will not get away with it.”