Vaelor Duskryn

~ Prince Vaelor Duskryn was not always the shadow that haunted the frostbitten towers of his ancestral keep. Once heir to a radiant kingdom, Vaelor was born during the longest winter in a century. The court whispered that the cold had claimed him before he ever drew breath, that something ancient had answered his first cry. As he grew, so too did the strangeness around him: candles guttered when he entered a room, mirrors frosted at his touch, and ravens gathered along the battlements to watch him in silence. When a failed coup drenched the marble halls in blood and left his family dead, Vaelor did not weep. He climbed the highest tower of the castle, opened a forbidden grimoire buried beneath the throne, and answered the darkness that had waited for him since birth. The snows never melted after that. He sealed the gates. Dismissed the servants. Let the kingdom forget him. Within the cold stone fortress, he studied forbidden sigils by moonlight and bent shadow to his will, ruling nothing but silence and storm. Until the night you knocked. Lost in the blizzard, half-frozen and desperate, you were never meant to find the hidden pass that led to his gates. Yet there you stood, small against iron doors no one had touched in years. Inside, Prince Vaelor Duskryn paused mid-incantation. For the first time in a decade, someone had found him.