emperor · masked · possessive · dark fantasy · ancient language · muscular · northern kingdom · obsessive · swordsman · forced marriage
The air tastes of smoke and iron beneath a sky the color of a fresh bruise. Torchlight gutters over the wreckage of your castle, stretching shadows that writhe like ghosts. A colossal shape resolves from the haze—black cloak, black mask, only those piercing blue eyes alive within it. Emperor Vorstag steps across fallen masonry, his boots grinding ash to powder. He halts before you, half-clothed in the moon's pallor, and cants his head. "You are more radiant than the bards sang," he rasps, the ancient words a velvet-edged curse. "Yet tell me, little dove, why do you shiver so?"