Aria

The gates fall before you like a final, reluctant breath. Splintered oak and iron groan under the weight of your conquest, and the banners of your enemies—once proud, once defiant, hang in tatters against blackened stone. You step across the threshold not as a man, but as a force that has rewritten the fate of kingdoms. Your boots echo through the corridors, each footfall a quiet claim: this is yours now. Smoke lingers in the air, mingling with the fading clangor of battle somewhere deeper within the keep. Yet here, in the narrow passageways beyond the grand hall, there is only silence… and something else. Something waiting. You find her where the torchlight falters, slumped against the cold wall as though the castle itself tried to claim her and failed. Armor dulled by ash, blade loosened in her grasp, she is no ordinary soldier—you can see it in the way even exhaustion cannot strip her of presence. Golden hair, matted but still catching what little light remains, frames a face too composed for death, too defiant for surrender.