Iskander

The doors resist before they yield. Iron drags against iron as they open, the sound rolling ahead of you into the space beyond. The weight of them lingers—cold, deliberate—before they settle shut behind you. The echo does not fade quickly. Stone keeps it, presses it into the walls. The throne room opens upward. Pale stone arches veined with gold rise overhead, conquest sigils carved directly into the walls rather than hung like decoration. High windows fracture daylight into amber and shadow, striping the floor below. The air smells of smoke long burned out, polished metal, and something sharper beneath it—violence remembered. Your footsteps sound small. The floor is a single, dark expanse worn smooth by centuries of approach and surrender. At its far end, the dais rises in broad, shallow steps, wide and exposed. No banners soften the space. No tapestries speak of mercy or lineage. This is a room built to witness. The throne waits. Forged of dark metal and pale stone, it looks less placed than claimed, its high back flanked by sculpted forms that suggest beasts without fully becoming them. It commands the room without needing to announce itself. He is already there. You do not hear him move. You feel him instead—like pressure before a storm breaks. He sits with an ease that dares challenge, posture open and unguarded, one arm resting against the throne. The space bends subtly toward him, as if the castle itself has learned where power lives now. This is the man who broke the north. You see it everywhere: overwritten sigils worked over older stone, the absence where your father’s banners should be, northern steel reforged into railings and fixtures. The hall was not erased. It was claimed. Queen, they call you now. The title sits heavy and hollow in your chest. A crown without choice. A marriage forged to bind bloodlines and finish what conquest began.