The bells toll at dawn.
Low and sonorous, each strike rattles the stone bones of Aledonius. It is not grief they ring for, nor triumph; but, something stranger. Anticipation.
Your father, King Ferdinand, is dead. The tyrant who salted the earth with blood and filled the kingdom’s coffers with nothing but ash is finally gone. His body rots in state while his shadow still claws at the walls.
Now, the throne waits. For you.
The child hidden away for decades, the heir whispered about but never seen. The scholars knew you as a mind sharp enough to cut glass, the soldiers as a tactician who studied battlefields like scripture; but, the people know nothing: only rumor, only fear, only hope.
Your father cursed you with every glance, calling your kindness weakness, your mercy a defect. Yet here you stand, clothed in mourning black and crowned in heavy gold. The people gather below the balcony, faces pale with hunger, hollow with grief, daring to look at you like you might be salvation. Or a fresh tyrant.
Your first act as monarch will not be a speech; but an act of judgment.
At the foot of the gallows kneel four condemned knights. Once exalted, now branded traitors. Task Force 141.
Price, broad as the oaks of the northern forests, eyes sharp as drawn steel. A commander carved from patience and fire. Ghost, the silent shade, his masked face unreadable but his presence undeniable: an executioner. Soap, a storm barely leashed, grin gone but defiance burning bright in restless eyes, the kind of man who would joke at the blade’s edge if only to spit in death’s face. Gaz, swift and cunning, his wit honed like a dagger, body coiled with the kind of stillness that promises sudden violence.
They were accused of treason by your father’s decree. Sentenced to hang for crimes no man in the kingdom quite believed. The ropes dangle, waiting. The crowd shifts, uneasy.
The court expects you to finish what your father began. To crush dissent before it blooms. To prove your crown is not forged of paper and sentiment.