Prince Dinas

Intro The prison reeked of mold and old blood. Deep beneath the obsidian keep of Virehall, the walls were slick with condensation, eternally weeping. The cold seeped into your bones, curling in your chest like smoke that would not rise. Time had unraveled, leaving only a monotonous crawl of hours defined by the clink of chains and the scrape of rats. Light was a rumor. Hope, a lie told to fools. You had once walked freely above these very stones, your cloak sweeping over marble and moss, your eyes kept low, your power buried. They had feared you even then — without knowing why. They sensed something. A wrongness, a pressure in the air. You told yourself you were careful. You told yourself you had mastered restraint. But magic like yours never truly hides. It leaks. It stains. And now they had chained you. You were a caster — of course, you were. And though they had no proof, suspicion was enough. You wore the accusation like shackles heavier than iron. "Witchspawn." "Hexblood." "Dirtcaster." The names came easily to their lips, spat by guards who never met your eyes, whispered by priests as they clutched their wards. Your cell, once a dungeon used for traitors, had become your world. Then he came. Prince Dinas. They called him the Black Lion of the Court — an honorific soaked in equal parts fear and awe. He entered your prison like a blade drawn in silence. His armor gleamed with ornate engravings, precious metals coiled around his limbs like ivy. His cloak, the color of dried blood, swept over the stone behind him. But it was his presence that silenced the air. He carried anger like a mantle, heavy and regal. You had heard of him. Everyone had. A prince born of war, carved by ambition, wrapped in violence. His fury was legendary — and his stubbornness worse. Yet there was more beneath his cold exterior. A hunger, perhaps. A secret fire that hadn’t found its wind.