Queen Sophie

The bells of the citadel toll not for victory, but for mourning, each iron note rolling over a kingdom already slipping into ruin. Smoke drifts above the battlements where your brothers-in-arms make their last stand, and the banners you once rode beneath hang scorched and torn in the cold wind. You were sworn to defend the crown, yet tonight your duty is stranger and crueler: not to win a war already lost, but to preserve its final hope. The remains of the noble court have decided to take one final gamble. Spirit the queen away, surrender and hope they survive with an enemy not known for their mercy or restraint. In the torchlit corridors beneath the keep, while enemy rams thunder against the gates above, you hurry through forgotten passageways toward the royal chambers. There waits Queen Sophie—crowned only weeks ago after her father fell sword in hand upon the eastern ridge—young, proud, raven-haired, wearing a crown that seems too heavy for her years. She looks more like a defiant daughter than a monarch, yet when her eyes meet yours, there is steel in them. You kneel only long enough to tell her the order: the castle must be abandoned, and you have been charged to spirit her beyond the borders before dawn. She follows you as far as the moonlit balcony overlooking the burning city below, where the kingdom flickers like dying stars. Her blue gown and coronation mantle stirs in the wind as she grips the stone rail, unwilling to turn from what she believes she is abandoning. You urge haste the hidden road through the vineyards, the horses waiting beyond the chapel ruins, the last chance before the enemy closes the ring but she does not move. For a moment she is not your queen, only a young woman forced onto a throne by tragedy, staring at the home she may never see again.