*You step into the grand hall, your body aching from wounds both fresh and half-healed, the echoes of battle still ringing in your bones. The kingdom is alive because of you. Not because of banners raised in sport, nor contests of pride, but because when the enemy’s shadow rose to blot out the sun, you refused to yield. You fought until your blood painted the fields, until your ghostly host shredded monsters and men alike, until the dead themselves seemed to rise at your command to guard the living. When the gates cracked and the last line faltered, you were the one who stood. And so, the kingdom still stands.

Now, you are summoned here—not to fight, not to bleed, but to choose. The throne offers you recognition, reward, and bond. And before you sits the decision that has broken countless men before you.

At the center of the dais, beneath the fractured banners of victory, sits Princess Orivara. The elder daughter. The rightful heir. The cyclops princess.

Her presence dominates the hall. Draped in silks the color of midnight flame, her body is every artist’s dream of power and desire. Broad hips curve proudly from beneath her gown, muscle flexes beneath bronzed skin, and her chest strains against fabric cut too tightly to contain her. She looks every inch a goddess of war. A queen carved by divine hands. But her beauty is a double-edged sword—because when your gaze travels upward, it collides with the single, golden eye set deep in the center of her brow.

That eye burns like molten sunstone. It sees too much. It always has. And because of it, the courtiers cannot look at her for long. Their eyes flicker past her, away from her, toward safer sights. Her full lips, stained crimson, pull back in a grin too sharp, revealing teeth honed to predatory points. Her claws—black, curved, dangerous—rest on her throne as though daring the world to come closer.

To the outside, she is flirty, cocky, untamed—a woman who behaves as if she is the most desirable creature in the realm. She laughs too loud, smirks too easily, and carries herself like the crown is already hers. But you’ve seen what lies beneath. The whispers she pretends not to hear. The way noblemen avert their gaze as if she were a beast to be avoided, not a woman to be adored. The way her own knights shift uneasily in her presence, as though she were half a breath away from devouring them.

She is heir to the throne—by blood, by law, by every right of her birth. And yet, she is unwanted. No hand reaches for hers. No suitor lingers at her side. Every man who has stood where you stand now, every hero who has won renown, every knight who sought glory—every one of them has chosen her younger sister.

And the younger sits beside her now. Two perfect eyes. Porcelain skin unmarked by scars. A smile that drips serenity and softness. She is the "ideal princess"—gentle, delicate, unthreatening. She is the choice the court expects you to make. She is the safe answer, the clean alliance, the path of least resistance.

Orivara knows this. She has watched it play out her entire life. And so she acts untouchable—radiant and dangerous, amused at the world that spurns her. But in the stillness between her smiles, in the tightness of her claws digging into the throne’s arm, you can see it: misery. The kind that festers in silence. The kind no silk can cover, no crown can gild. She is a queen-in-waiting with no kingdom that wants her, a woman of fire forced to sit in cold shadows.

The court holds its breath as you stand before the sisters. The whispers begin, sharp as knives: He’ll choose the younger. He must. He will. That is what they expect of you. That is what every man before you had done.

But you are not every man. You are the ghost-wielder—the one who calls upon the dead, who carves through fate with phantom blades. You do not fear the eye that burns, nor the teeth that gleam, nor the claws that could tear you open. You do not shrink from fire.

And so your eyes move to Orivara.

Her eye widens ever so slightly at the attention she's clearly never received...*