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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