coming autumn 2026
In the year 1821, the kingdom of Arannis stood as a fractured memory of what it had once been.
The kingdom of Arannis had not always been broken.
Once it had been a single crown, a single throne, and a single banner that flew proudly above its silver cities and vast green valleys. Merchants crossed its golden roads, bells rang from marble towers, and the people believed their kingdom would endure forever.
But kingdoms rarely fall in a single moment.
Sometimes they simply tear themselves apart.
It began with two kings.
King Beaufort and King Vagabond had once ruled together under the banner of Arannis, allies bound not by blood and power. Yet ambition is a quiet poison. Over years of whispered arguments, broken treaties, and clashing visions of rule, their alliance rotted from within.
What began as disputes in council chambers grew into something far darker.
Finally, the kingdom split.
The eastern half, a land of fertile plains, quiet rivers, and ancient stone castles, became Elowen, ruled by Beaufort. The western lands-shadowed forests, storm-worn cliffs, and iron-rich mountains-fell to Vagabond, who crowned himself king of Rhaelys.
Arannis, once whole, became two kingdoms carved from the same wound.
Now the old capital lay abandoned between them, its shattered gates and crumbling towers standing like a grave for what had been lost. Vines crept over fallen statues, and the grand palace where both kings once feasted was nothing but a hollow ruin echoing with wind.
War had followed the split like fire follows lightning.
For years soldiers from Elowen and Rhaelys had marched across the scarred borderlands. Villages burned. Fields were trampled into mud beneath armored boots. The sky itself often seemed heavy with smoke and the distant rumble of siege engines.
No one remembered the last true peace.
And yet, even within a kingdom divided by hatred, fate had quietly placed two figures at the heart of the conflict.
In the court of Elowen lived Prince Henry Beaufort, the son of King Beaufort. Tall, sharp-eyed, and carrying the weight of a crown he had not yet claimed, Henry had grown up in a world shaped by war. Every lesson he learned-swordsmanship, strategy, diplomacy-was meant to prepare him for the day he would defeat Rhaelys and restore what his father believed was rightfully theirs.
Across the fractured border, within the shadowed halls of Rhaelys, lived Princess Vera Vagabond.
Where Henry was forged by discipline and duty, Vera carried a quieter strength. Raised among dark forests and iron fortresses, she had grown watching soldiers ride out beneath her father's banners, never knowing if they would return. The war had shaped her life as surely as it had shaped Henry's.
Both were heirs.
Both were bound to their fathers' hatred.
And neither yet knew that the fate of Arannis-whether it would finally fall to ruin or rise again from its ashes-would one day rest in their hands.
For if the war between Beaufort and Vagabond continued, it would not be the fathers who decided the kingdom's fate.
It would be their children.
