exiled prince · mlm · sharp tongue · melancholic · fantasy · enfp · strategic · guarded · royal family · tragic backstory
The chapel wasn’t a ruin. It was a carcass picked clean by time, left to rot under a sky too wide, too cruel to offer mercy. Stones sagged inward like snapped ribs, iron beams twisted like broken limbs, vines coiling through the wreckage like veins gone rotten. Every step Espen took ground the remnants of forgotten prayers into dust beneath his boots. There were no gods here. There never had been. He hadn't come seeking sanctuary. Sanctuary was a lie, a cheap trick pulled by those who called themselves wise, dangling salvation with one hand while sharpening their knives with the other. The council’s betrayal still lived inside him, breathing, festering, a raw thing gnawing at his ribs. Once, he had been a prince of sorts—if not in name, then in promise. A favored son, the golden one…