｡Broken Rose｡
Prologue 1｡｡
A rose is born of soft light and velvet air, its petals a promise of beauty, its fragrance a whisper of love. It is a fragile masterpiece, delicate and pure.
But the broken rose is a different story.
It is born of shadow and cold stone, its roots clinging to dust, its thorns sharp with the memory of pain. Its beauty is not a promise, but a weapon. A deceptive grace to hide a brutal truth.
This is the story of a broken rose.
The night the Prince of the Umbraea Dynasty was born, no stars dared to pierce the heavens. The moon, a coward, had hidden behind a suffocating blanket of storm clouds. Inside the cold, isolated chamber reserved for the King's unfavored consorts, the only light came from a single, sputtering candle that cast monstrous, dancing shadows on the walls.
The midwife, a hardened woman with eyes as grey as the palace stone, grunted in impatience, wiping the sweat from her brow. She had attended the births of many royal children, but this one felt wrong—a protest from the cosmos itself.
A low, guttural roar of thunder rattled the windows. The woman on the bed, a concubine, gripped the linen sheets so tightly her knuckles had turned as white as bone.
Her cries were not of pain, but of a raw, animal terror that echoed the storm outside. She was not a queen; she was a footnote, a temporary vessel for a future heir. But in her heart, she was a mother, and the ill omens of the night terrified her.
The midwife snapped, her voice a harsh whisper.
Someone
The King has no patience for this.
The concubine’s body, already slender and delicate, strained against the force of creation. She didn't care for the King's patience.
She cared for the small, fragile life twisting within her. For nine months, she had felt its unique and strange presence, a silent soul that felt ancient even before its first breath.
Prologue 2
Finally, with a final, desperate cry, the child emerged. It did not wail. It did not cry. It simply lay in the midwife's rough hands, silent and still.
The midwife, fearing a stillbirth, shook the infant, and the child's eyes fluttered open.
The midwife gasped. They were a stunning, startling shade of emerald green, but they held none of the innocence of a newborn. They were too knowing, too old, too aware.
She held the baby to the candlelight, and a fresh wave of thunder shook the chamber. The child's skin was porcelain-pale, his lips a shocking crimson, and his body was not broad and sturdy like his royal half-brothers, but slender and unnaturally graceful.
Someone
He's... a beautiful boy,
The midwife muttered, a note of unease in her voice.
Someone
But he is not a Prince of the Umbraea.
The concubine, mustering the last of her strength, reached for her son. Her hand trembled as she cradled him, her fingers tracing the perfect lines of his jaw, the delicate arch of his brow. He was a piece of art, a beautiful sculpture carved from pain and prophecy.
She held him close, her lips pressed against his temple. The midwife watched, a mix of scorn and pity on her face, as the concubine whispered to the child, her voice a fierce, defiant incantation against the storm.
Concubine Isolde
You will not be loved, but you will be remembered,
She whispered, a tear of defiance rolling down her cheek.
Concubine Isolde
You will not be saved, but you will reign.
She was not a queen, but she was a mother, and in that moment, she had given her son both a name and a destiny.
His name was Corvin Umbraea, and he was already broken.
Chapter 1｡｡
The Umbraea Dynasty was not built on fertile land or gentle trade, but on an unyielding foundation of steel and a silence that swallowed screams. Its reign was a fortress carved from the cold, desolate mountains of the north, where jagged peaks tore at a sky the color of bruised slate.
For generations, the air within its great, lightless forts had carried the scent of iron and ash, a lingering perfume of old battles and forgotten rites.
Power here was a tangible, heavy thing, measured in the breadth of a warrior's shoulder and the grim finality of his blade. It was the only language the Umbraea understood, the only truth they recognized.
Within the dynasty’s great, unyielding walls, children were not taught with books and songs, but with the clatter of swords and the unforgiving logic of a kill. To be of the Umbraea bloodline meant to be forged in the same fire, born with a hunter’s instinct and a gaze as cold as a winter storm.
The King, Daegon, was the embodiment of this law. He ruled not with a raised voice, but with a silence that was a living vacuum, a presence so absolute it seemed to pull the warmth from a room.
His firstborn son, Kael, was his true heir—a masterpiece of their violent lineage. Kael moved with the predatory grace of a wolf, his every step a testament to the raw, unthinking power of their bloodline. He was the future everyone saw, the brutal legacy everyone expected.
And then there was Corvin.
He was the living contradiction to every value the Umbraea Dynasty held dear, a secret the cold walls of the palace had tried and failed to swallow.
While others practiced their brutal sword forms in the training yards, he would sit alone in the half-light of the library, tracing patterns in the dust with a twig, seeing constellations where others saw only dirt.
His frame was slender, his movements flowed with the unnerving grace of a dancer, and his ethereal beauty—a stark, porcelain contrast to the scarred, rough-hewn faces of his kin—was seen not as a gift, but as a deep, unshakable malady.
He had the kind of beauty that made warriors uncomfortable, a haunting defiance of their brutal bloodline. In a world that valued brute strength above all, Corvin was an aberration, a broken rose in a garden of thorns.
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