Famine swept the land like a plague of silence.

  Then came war—again. Years upon years of it. With more dead to feed the soil and fewer mouths left to feed, the wild began reclaiming the edges of civilization, taking back what had once been stolen from it.

  And from this wasteland bloomed stories.

  One such tale, shared by a colorfully clothed old tinkerer in taverns from the lowlands to the high courts, spread like wildfire across the realm.

  “It all began,” he’d rasp dramatically, “with a poisoning—now known as The Poison Scandal.”

  The details? They changed with the weather, but the bones of it remained:

  During the Great Convention of Lords—fiefs big and small had gathered to discuss the famine—someone dared to poison Lord Tharien Vexmoor of Velmorrah, richest of the fiefs, the Gilded Reach itself.

  Known as The Golden Architect, the old lord survived—barely—spirited away in time. It could have ended there. Quiet investigations, whispered accusations, justice served in silence.

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  But no. His son, Caelan Vexmoor, the Scion of the Gilded Veil, saw fire where his father saw gold.

  He accused Lord Vaeric Thornmaere of Draevenholt—that grim mountain of a man, the Iron Vow himself—of treachery and attempted murder.

  Right there, in the midst of peace, he drew steel. Called Lord Vaeric a dwarf, a short-souled coward, and worse.

  Gasps all around.

  And you know House Thornmaere. Their words: "Bound in Blade, Freed by None."

  Honor, to them, is not just code—it’s blood.

  But Lord Vaeric did not draw his own sword. Oh no.

  “When a pup barks,” he said, heard by all, “it must be met—by its master… or another pup.”

  And so, he sent his sword.

  Not a weapon. A daughter.

  Serenya Thornmaere, the Unyielding Rose, stepped forward with Vyrethorn in hand—a blade that does not shine, only waits. Said to drink sorrow. Passed down through generations of pain and principle. Its edge does not bite. It judges.

  They say Vyrethorn only awakens in the presence of betrayal.

  The duel was swift.

  Caelan fell—slain by Draevenholt steel. The golden thread of Velmorrah’s future was cut, just like that.

  And so began the war anew.

  Still, the tinkerer tells his tale. Hundreds of times. Never the same, yet always true in the way stories are. And though his stew’s thin and the ale’s mostly water, no soul leaves without warmth in their belly and the taste of fire on their tongue.

  Because in times like these—

  a good story is more filling than bread.