Prologue | Shadowed Keep

The White Keep rose against the horizon like a knife driven into the earth. Its walls shone pale, not because they were clean, but because they had been scrubbed with the sweat and bones of generations. To strangers who passed from afar, it was a marvel - a fortress of discipline, banners of strength, the image of order. To those who lived in its shadow, it was a merchant’s stall dressed in stone.

Coin was the mortar of that place. Coin bought soldiers. Coin bought silence. Coin bought truth itself. It was said among the peasants, whispered when the guards were far, muttered under breath so low it was almost a prayer:

“Crown a trader, and he will trade away the crown.”

Others, bolder or bitterer, said it longer, heavier, like a curse:

“The crown in a merchant’s hands is but another wares to bargain with.”

Both rang true. For the King upon that throne was no lord of birthright, no protector of people. He was a seller. A man who weighed kingdoms like grain on a scale and sold them piece by piece to those with heavier purses.

The proof was carved across the land. Wars were fought not for soil or safety, but for contracts. Soldiers were lent like tools, sent to bleed in battles not their own, their deaths tallied in ledgers beside shipments of iron and timber. Villages that asked for help found themselves stripped bare instead - their harvests seized, their rivers diverted, their stone carted off to feed the Keep’s towers. The banner did not shield; it branded.

The folk starved while the Keep feasted. Wine poured in torrents, meat lay rotting on golden platters, and still the merchants called it prosperity. The ledgers showed profit, and so the King declared triumph. But on the roads, children clawed bark from trees for food. In the fields, farmers buried seed they would never live to see grow.

Those who dared speak too boldly against it vanished. A guard’s warning was well-known:

“Speak of it again, and your tongue feeds pigs.”

So tongues grew cautious, voices quieter, until the kingdom itself seemed to breathe in whispers. Yet beneath the silence, the anger never died. It smoldered like embers beneath ash, invisible, but always there.

And through it all, the White Keep gleamed. Its towers climbed higher, its coffers grew heavier, its armies marched farther. The King sold lives as easily as spices, sold lands as easily as cloth, sold truth as easily as lies.

The saying endured. A mutter at wells, a hiss in taverns, a groan among dying soldiers.