The southern wind carried the scent of dawn — cool, sharp, and laced with the faint sweetness of fallen leaves. Autumn had begun its quiet conquest over summer.
From the high balcony of Hevenfort, Prince Alaric stood in stillness, his gaze cast toward the training grounds beyond the palace gardens below.
The banners of Azurverda rippled against the morning light — a crimson firebird on obsidian silk, wings unfurled as if to defy the wind itself. They whispered of a new legacy, of a birth of a new empire, of future glory that would be forged and reforged through generations of conquest and sacrifice.
