The air in the throne room was thick with the scent of oiled steel, whetstone dust, and the low, rhythmic murmur of industry from the forges below. Veridia sat not on a throne of gold and bone, but on a severe, high-backed chair of black iron and scarred timber—a seat of power built for a warlord, not a princess. Spread across the massive table before her were maps of the Tithelands, their borders marked with charcoal and weighted down with goblin daggers. This was not the languid, perfumed court of her past, a place of whispered intrigues and aesthetic cruelties. This was a war room, and she was its undisputed queen.
Voron Sagewind stood opposite her, his massive form a study in patient stillness, a mountain temporarily contained by four walls. He pointed a thick, calloused finger at a point on the map, his nail tracing the border of a newly shaded territory. "The Ironhide clan has folded. Their chieftain sent a runner this morning. He bends the knee."
"He had no choice," Veridia said, a smirk touching her lips. The taste of victory was still fresh, still potent enough to almost chase away the strange hollowness that had settled in her core. She had not met the Ironhides on the field. Instead, she had bought out their grain supply through a proxy merchant and, with a carefully placed demolition charge, rerouted the only clean water source in their territory. It was a bloodless, elegant, and utterly devastating move. "A starving army is just a crowd of angry men. He was a brute who thought in axe-swings. I thought in logistics."
"It was a shrewd victory, my Queen," Voron rumbled, his voice the slow grind of stone on stone. "But a desperate clan is a dangerous one. Their warriors have pride. Cornered beasts are unpredictable. We should reinforce the patrols along their border until their bellies are full and their tempers have cooled."
"Let them posture," Veridia waved a dismissive hand, the gesture betraying a flicker of her old, effortless arrogance. "They'll be too busy fighting amongst themselves for scraps to be a threat." Her pride, once a fatal flaw, had been honed into a weapon. It was still arrogance, but now it was backed by a string of brutal, undeniable successes.
Their debate was cut short by the sound of heavy boots pounding on the stone floor outside. A scout burst into the chamber, his breath coming in ragged, painful bursts, his face pale beneath a layer of road grime. He stumbled to one knee, not in ceremony, but in sheer, bone-deep exhaustion.
"A message, my Queen," he gasped, holding out his hands as if presenting a fragile, holy relic.
It was not a captured banner or a blood-stained letter. Cradled in the scout's worn leather gauntlets was a scroll case of pure, polished obsidian. It seemed to drink the torchlight, a sliver of impossible, alien sleekness in their world of grit and recycled iron. It was a piece of home, and Veridia felt a cold knot of dread tighten in her gut, a feeling she hadn't known since her exile began.
Veridia's eyes narrowed, instantly recognizing the flawless craftsmanship, the cold, sterile perfection of the Infernal Court. A faint, hateful thrum of magic emanated from the object, a signature as familiar and repulsive as her own reflection in a stagnant puddle. She took the case from the scout, its surface impossibly smooth and cool against her skin, a jarring contrast to the rough-hewn reality of her new life.
"Leave us," she commanded, her voice sharp. The scout scrambled to his feet and fled without a backward glance.
"A trap?" Voron asked, his hand drifting instinctively to the axe at his belt.
"Worse," Veridia spat, her fingers tracing the seal. "A performance." It was not the old, familiar crest of House Vex. This was new. A stylized serpent coiled around a cracked crown, rendered in silver that seemed to writhe in the low light. Seraphine's personal mark. A brand launch. Veridia braced herself for an explosion, a curse, the sudden appearance of her sister's mocking, intangible face. With a sharp, defiant twist, she snapped the seal.
The scroll within was not the venomous screed she anticipated. It was pristine vellum, inscribed with a flawless, legalistic script that mimicked the founding charters of mortal kingdoms. The cold formality of it was more unnerving than any taunt. It felt… real.
She began to read aloud, her voice tight with a disbelief that slowly began to curdle into a low, simmering fury. "A formal declaration to all powers, mortal and otherwise, within the territories of Aethelgard." Her eyes scanned the next lines, her breath catching. "By right of conquest and accord, I, Seraphine Vex, do hereby claim sovereignty over the lands colloquially known as the Ash-Mark Coast."
She paused, looking up at Voron, whose own face had become a grim mask of stone. A bluff. It had to be a pathetic, desperate bluff.
"She's claimed the western seaboard," he stated, his voice flat and devoid of surprise. He grasped the military reality in an instant. "The outcast clans there have no love for the Coalition. They would ally with a demon to spite the King. It is strategically sound territory."
Veridia forced a laugh, a harsh, ugly sound. "She claims it with what army? The ghosts of her cancelled fan club?" She continued reading, her voice dropping lower, each word a drop of poison she was forced to swallow. "The Barony of the Ash-Mark Coast is established under my protection and rule, recognized by its chief allies and sworn vassals, including the formidable forces of Warlord Grummash Bonebreaker…"
Voron's head snapped up, his stoicism finally cracking. "Grummash? She has the Slag Orcs." The implication was stark and immediate. This was not a childish prank. This was not a desperate gambit. It was a strategic masterstroke. Seraphine had secured a power base. She had territory. She had a real, battle-hardened army. She had turned their personal feud, their petty reality show, into a continent-spanning war between two rival powers.
Veridia's knuckles were white where she gripped the vellum, the scroll trembling with the force of her rage. Her gaze flickered to the bottom of the document, to the final, elegant, looping script of her sister's signature. Beneath it was a single, curt line, a postscript designed as the final twist of the knife. Her voice, when she spoke it, was a low, dangerous whisper that cut through the silence of the hall.
She met Voron's grim stare, her eyes burning with a cold, murderous light.
"It concludes," she said, her voice dripping with venom. "'May the best Queen win.'"
Absolute silence descended upon the room, heavy and suffocating. Then came a sharp, cracking sound that echoed off the stone walls. Veridia slowly, deliberately, crushed the obsidian scroll case in her fist. Shards of polished black stone dug into her palm, and a line of crimson blood welled up, tracing a path down her wrist. She did not flinch. She did not feel the pain.
Her expression was a mask of pure, incandescent rage, colder and harder than any winter. The hollowness she'd felt moments ago was gone, filled to the brim with a glorious, clarifying purpose. The game was no longer about survival or revenge. It was about absolute, uncompromising conquest.