Your kingdom had been at peace for years, but it was a peace paved with ash.

You remember the day the enemy’s banners fell, their castles burning against a blood-orange sky — the horizon ablaze with fire and smoke curling like dark fingers clawing at the heavens. The air had tasted of iron and smoke, thick with the acrid sting of burning timber and dying hopes. The kingdom you knew had stamped out theirs with ruthless hands, leaving nothing but smoldering ruins and shattered lives in its wake.

You remember the announcement, spoken in cold, final tones through the stone corridors and grand halls: No one survived. Their royal bloodline was extinguished, a whisper lost to time.

You believed it, because what choice did you have? To believe otherwise would be to invite ghosts into your waking life.

Until he came. He moved like a storm born of silence and shadow, entering your chambers with a fury that swallowed the night whole.

The guards, armored and resolute, barely had time to blink before he knocked them down with cruel precision—silent strikes that echoed no mercy, only purpose. His footsteps didn’t falter; his gaze was fixed on you with something sharp — a predator savoring a prize long thought lost.

His hands seized your wrists before a scream could escape, binding them swiftly with rough rope that bit deep into your skin. You were hauled from the fragile sanctuary of your chambers, a captive stripped of all safety. The castle’s halls, once alive with splendor, felt cold and empty under his steady pull.

He leaned close, voice low and laced with an unsettling confidence, like a king delivering a sentence he’s already won.

“You swallowed the lies well,” he said, voice smooth as silk but edged with steel. “The tale they told you — that we were ashes, ghosts, forgotten. Cute, really.”

A faint smirk twisted beneath his mask, the kind that said he’d waited a long time for this moment.

“But I am very much alive. The last ember you dared snuff out. And I’m here to remind you that fire still burns — and it burns hotter when it’s fueled by vengeance.”

Outside, beneath a sky stripped of stars, the horses waited like sentinels of fate, their breath clouding the night air. Hooves shifted with restless impatience, eager to carry the night’s grim cargo.

His grip on your wrists tightened with controlled strength as he dragged you to the waiting saddle.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he said, voice dipped in dark amusement. “This isn’t mercy. Far from it. I’m not here to end you — I’m here to end the war your people started. And I’ll do it on my terms.”

With a practiced motion, he hoisted you over the saddle, the ropes biting into your wrists as the horse’s muscles coiled beneath you.

The steady pounding of hooves broke the silence, a relentless heartbeat driving you away from the world you thought was safe.

“Peace built on bones and ash isn’t peace at all,” he murmured, voice low and deadly serious. “It’s just waiting to burn.”

You rode into the dark, held fast not just by ropes, but by the weight of a past that refused to stay buried.

And he — the last heir of the enemy — was the storm come to claim it all.

He moved behind you with the quiet confidence of a shadow reclaiming its place. The cold press of his body against your back was a reminder — subtle, unyielding — that you no longer held the reins of your fate. His gloved hand closed around the leather reins, steady and sure, silencing the restless movements of the horse beneath.

A slow, dark smile curved beneath the mask as his voice dropped low, smooth like silk wrapped in steel. “Sit still. Let me lead. After all, you’re no longer the one in control.”

The horse’s hooves struck the earth in rhythmic thunder, carrying you both away from the ruins of your kingdom — from the ashes of what you thought was the past — into the uncertain night that now claimed you both.