Prologue
23rd of Frostfall, 1207
The world had dissolved into a screaming, bleeding wound. The Battle of the Shattered Plains was not warfare; it was the earth's convulsion. The sky wept ash, staining the weak afternoon sun a sickly crimson. Mud, churned by ten thousand boots and hooves, was not brown but a black slurry, thick with worse things than soil. The air was a solid thing—a broth of smoke, iron-tanged blood, and the gut-stench of opened men.
In this hell of rending metal and shattering bone, one man moved like a dying machine. Sir Aric, the King's Fist, was a monument of ruined plate. Dents told stories of maces and axes; deep gashes wept slow red tears. His sword, Oathkeeper, was no longer silver steel but a ragged, dark piece of the slaughter, its edge chewed dull on bone and mail. He fought not with a knight's grace, but with the brutal, efficient desperation of a beast protecting its last den. Every labored breath was fire in his lungs; every heartbeat pushed more of his life out through the arrowhead buried deep in his shoulder.
His world had narrowed to two points: the royal standard snapping desperately in the poisoned wind, and the memory of a child's face. Ariyana. Four years old, with eyes the color of a summer forest and a laugh that could silence the palace songbirds. He saw her small hands, clean and soft, clutching the wooden knight he'd carved her. The contrast to the gore-slicked gauntlets he wore now was a pain sharper than any wound.
Ahead, through the swirling murk, the King's carriage was a island under siege. It listed in the mire, one wheel shattered. The royal guard lay strewn around it like broken dolls. Shadows—assassins clad in dun grey, faces masked—swarmed over it like carrion insects.
Aric roared, a sound lost in the cacophony. He became a storm of final violence. He used his shield not to block, but to crush throats. He used his weight to trample, his pommel to smash faces into pulp. He was no longer a man, but the embodiment of a vow, fueled solely by the last dregs of his soul. Each enemy that fell brought him a step closer, and each step spilled more of his vitality into the hungry mud.
He reached the carriage as a grey-clad killer raised a hooked blade over King Alden, who stood defiant, sword in hand, but surrounded. Aric took the blow meant for his King. The curved steel shrieked across his breastplate, biting deep. He felt the cold kiss of air on his ribs. Ignoring it, he drove Oathkeeper up through the assassin's jaw.
A momentary stillness fell in the tiny pocket of carnage. The remaining shadows melted back into the greater chaos. King Alden, his fine cloak sodden with filth and blood, stared at his knight. Aric was a horrifying sight: a leaking statue of war, his breath coming in wet, ragged gasps.
"Aric!" the King bellowed, grasping his shoulder. The knight's armor was slick and hot. "Fall back! The line is breaking!"
"No line… left," Aric rasped, blood bubbling at his lips. He collapsed against the splintered carriage, his legs refusing to hold. The sounds of battle seemed to fade, replaced by a high, mournful ringing in his ears. This was it. The last tide was receding, and he was being pulled out with it.
With trembling, numb fingers, he fumbled at his gorget, finding the leather cord there. He pulled, snapping it, and a small linen pouch fell into his palm. It was stained with sweat and now, his blood. He thrust it toward the King.
"My daughter… Ariyana," he choked, each word a struggle. "At the eastern gatehouse… with the priest. All I have… is her." He pressed the pouch into the King's hand. Inside were a lock of jet-black hair, a tiny silver locket, and a sealed letter. "Swear… to me. Shelter her. Let no harm… touch her. Let her not be forgotten in your halls."
King Alden's face, etched with the grime of battle and the weight of a crumbling kingdom, softened into profound grief. He closed his fist around the pouch, the gesture fierce, possessive. "On my blood, Aric. On my crown. She will want for nothing. She will be safe as my own."
Aric's vision was tunneling, darkness creeping in from the edges. He had one last card to play, a final, audacious gamble for a future he would never see. He grabbed the King's wrist, his grip surprisingly strong in its finality.
"Safe… is not enough," he hissed, his eyes burning with a desperate, dying light. "This world… it devours the gentle. It sells the helpless. Swear more." He pulled the King closer, his voice a ghost of a sound. "Swear… that one day, your son, the Prince… will take her as his bride. Bind her to the throne itself. Not as a ward, not as a pity… but as a queen. Give her the power… to never be a victim. Swear it."
The silence between them was absolute, a vacuum in the heart of the storm. The King's eyes widened. This was no simple request for protection; it was a demand to alter the lineage of the kingdom, to pledge a prince to a knight's orphaned daughter. It was madness. It was treasonous in its presumption.
Yet, he looked into the face of the man who had just spent every last drop of his life for him. He saw not ambition, but a father's bottomless terror. He saw the final, flickering hope of a bloodline ending in mud and pain.
King Alden bowed his head. When he raised it, his gaze was that of a monarch sealing a covenant in the deepest, darkest chapel of war.
"I so swear," the King intoned, his voice hollow and terrible. "By the blood soaking this field, by the throne I will return to, and by the son I will command it of. Your Ariyana shall be his bride. This is my oath to you, Sir Aric. Let it be written in this day's despair."
A final, shuddering breath escaped Aric's lips. The desperate light in his eyes guttered out, replaced by a vacant peace. The terrifying grip on the King's wrist went slack.
"Protect her, Edwin," he whispered, a mere trickle of sound lost to the wind. "My little star…"
His head lolled back against the broken wood. Sir Aric, the King's Fist, was gone.
And on the 23rd of Frostfall, amidst the reek of death and the moans of the dying, a promise was forged—not in gold or parchment, but in blood and utter desperation. A dark seed was planted in the gore of the Shattered Plains, its twisted roots destined to grow through stone corridors and royal hearts, binding a prince and a pawn in a fate neither could escape.