The air of the chambers was heavy, thick with the scent of dust and aged wood. Apollaea stood, unmoving, in the shadowed corner of the room. Her father loomed before the hearth, the flames casting long shadows that stretched across the stone walls like ghosts of the past.

  His face, carved with the hard lines of time and war, softened for a moment. She could sense the shift in him, the brief flicker of something more than the cold, commanding figure he presented. His gaze lingered on the empty chair beside him, covered in dust - once occupied by her mother, Coryn. Apollaea knew the weight of the loss, though she never spoke of it. There was no room for mourning, it only existed in stories, not her reality - just the understanding that things must move forward.

  “She was the heart of it all, Apollaea. The only one to halt my rage. But now… there is nothing. A hollow void.”

  His words broke the silence, rough, but tinged with something unspoken. It wasn’t sorrow - sorrow was a luxury they simply could not afford - but a recognition of absence. A recognition of what had been taken from him.

  She didn’t respond. There was no need. She stood just as a reflection of him, her presence carved from the same unforgiving steel. There was no space for softness within her - only the quiet, constant pulse of duty. She was the one who would do all he could not, the one who would carry the weight of his will, no matter the cost.

  “Do you feel it?” His voice softened, drawing her gaze to the inferno, “The weight of what we’ve lost. What I’ve lost.”

  Apollaea did not look at him, her eyes fixed on the flickering fire. His grief was a thing she knew well enough to understand, even if it had never been something she could truly feel. She had never been taught how to grieve. Instead, she had been taught how to fight.

  Her father had never been one for long speeches, and she had no interest in offering the empty comfort of words. She had seen enough battles, enough deaths, to know that words rarely changed the course of anything.

  But she could still sense the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands gripped the stone mantle. She knew him well enough to understand that, beneath his cold exterior, there was a maelstrom of thoughts he hardly allowed to surface.

  “The world is not kind to voids, Apollaea.” He turned to her, his voice low and sharp, “It fills them. With rot, with chaos, with weakness. Your mothers absence leaves a crack in our peace. And cracks spread.”

  The tension in his shoulders hardened into something sharper, a deliberate edge honed by grief and anger. Turning slightly, his shadow fell long across the chamber as his gaze fixed on the flames.

  “The Free Cities think themselves strong, but they’re no better than Nurland’s savages, or the East Men. Brink, Vanthe - all of them.”

  He curled his fingers into a fist as he gestured towards the masonry of the hearth.

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  “They are cracks, fault lines waiting to splinter and break,” His voice grew harsher with every word, “They dress themselves beneath silks and stones, but underneath? Fragile.”

  His voice cut through the crackle of the blaze as his fist struck the stone mantle, the full sound reverberating through the chamber. Apollaea’s jaw tightened imperceptibly, but she held her position. Her father’s emotions weren’t like her own. They were not distractions, but fuel.

  For a brief moment, a thought flickered in her chest, a yearning to understand what her father felt. But it was gone in an instant, drowned in the certainty of duty.

  “When the time comes, they’ll cling to their illusions of strength. They’ll raise their banners, hide behind their pitiful walls, and call it defiance. But it won’t matter.”

  His gaze remained fixed on her now, as if daring her to flinch, to falter. She didn’t. The steady rise and fall of her breath betrayed no emotion, no doubts. The air in the chamber grew heavier, the warmth of the fire battling the chill of his words. All the while Apollaea’s mind worked in quiet precision. She did not think of the Free Cities as places filled with people, lives and ambitions. To her, they were nothing but problems to be solved - fractures to mend by force, as her father had taught her from the moment she could hold a blade.

  “You’ve seen the East, and the savage lands of Nurland. You have faced the chaos that breeds when there is no order.” His voice softened, but edge of steel remained, “The Free Cities are no different. They hide their rot behind walls and call it strength. But walls can be toppled. Rot can be burned.”

  Her hand twitched at her side, betraying the faintest ripple beneath her cold exterior - a trace of something hungry, but buried too deep to rise. She could already see it - the broken gates, the banners torn and scattered, the defiant cries silenced beneath the thunder of steel. Deep in her chest roused a thirst to bring about the vision quickly - a lust for blood forged in years of watching her father’s justice unfold.

  “Do you understand what must be done?” His shadow matched her figure now, his voice a low rumble.

  For the first time, she lifted her gaze to meet his. The firelight reflected in her eyes, twin sparkles of amber hiding the darkness beneath. Her voice, when it came, was quiet but firm, the weight of it carrying more than words.

  “I understand.”

  Her father nodded, a faint, grim smile touching his lips before vanishing, swallowed by the weight of their shared purpose. He turned back towards the hearth, running a hand over Coryn’s empty chair, his touch lingering just long enough to betray the vulnerability he refused to voice. But when he spoke again, his words were edged with steel.

  “History will judge us by our choices, my child.” He glanced over his shoulder one last time, “And it will remember how we answer.”

  Apollaea didn’t hesitate. She raised her helmet, its cold steel pressing against her skin as she donned it, covering the many scars over her jaw and cheeks. The visage bore a faint, lion-like engraving, a mark of her father’s legacy, glinting in the firelight for a fleeting moment, a glint that mirrored the spark of resolve in her amber eyes. Its familiar weight grounded her, the cold steel a comfort and shield. There was no room for weakness, or hesitation. Yet, somewhere deep within, the shadow of something softer stirred - and was swiftly silenced.

  She turned, marching towards the heavy wooden doors, her figure glimmering as the firelight danced on her armor once last time before she slipped away into the night. The weight of his will sat upon her shoulders as she vanished into the cold, and she carried it without complaint.

  In the silence that followed, only the fire remained, steadily and unyielding, devouring all in its path.