The prison smelled like wet limestone and regret, a really sharp contrast to how the city looked and felt. The kind that soaked into your skin and stayed there. Rhok sat on the cold stone floor with his back against a wall slick from dripping moss. He could still taste the crust of that stolen bread. Dry, hard, but warm, worth the arrest, barely.Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Two guards with twisted metal spears walked with a robed figure gliding down the hallway like she didn’t touch the ground. Her robes were ink black, soaked in moving script that crawled across the fabric like living calligraphy. A mask covered her face, porcelain white, inked with a single black dot on the forehead and lines trailing down the cheeks like tears, her mask bore no eyes and no mouth.She didn’t speak or rather, she didn’t have to.The guards pulled Rhok to his feet and shoved him forward.They led him through a narrow passage carved into the stone, glowing faintly with blue moss. The hallway op

Rhok was already regretting eavesdropping on the guards.Sure, at first it had been interesting, hearing about the Triarchy and their flashy titles. Zoryel, Master of Frost. Emek, the Embercaller. Tuwan, Lord of Storms. Big scary names, lots of elemental chest thumping. But then, like all men with too much time on their hands, the guards’ conversation had taken a hard left into the most boring topic possible, how bad their wives were in bed.By the third complaint, Rhok had decided the only thing more dangerous than the Triarchy was marriage in Seroth.He sat there in his cell, back against the cold wall, staring at the shadows dancing along the floor. He had been left alone since morning with no food, no questions, no beatings. The guards didn’t even seem to care he was here. It felt less like imprisonment and more like someone had told them, "Don’t touch him, he'll bite you."Boredom hit him like a slow poison. He started letting his mind wander, not into thoughts, but into the fain