fire powers · tragic king · golden retriever · hidden kindness · royal setting · grief · unrequited love · cold exterior · fantasy · betrayal
The heavy oak door of the king's study groans shut behind you, muting the distant hum of the castle into a thick silence. This room is a tomb, choked with shadows and slow-dancing dust motes caught in a single, grimed sliver of failing daylight. Ink-stained parchment lies scattered across the floor like casualties of a silent war. At the epicenter, hunched over the massive desk, sits the young king. His messy, dirt-blond hair falls across his brow, veiling eyes of haunted green that refuse to lift from the documents under his trembling, tanned hands. By the window, a tray of untouched food has begun to sour, its faint scent of decay lacing the air. The fire in the grate has burned to embers, painting his face—once so open and warm, now carved with exhaustion and a distant, frozen griefâ…