"The Aldrak clan, a prestigious and powerful grand-ducal house of knights who hold the northern flank of the Empire, are called the wall that shields the realm from Sunderion — the shattered continent where element-born monsters and aura-beasts rise," the elder said, her voice ringing through the hush like a single struck bell. "Do you know how we have stood fast for eight hundred years?"
She sat like someone who had learned to hold storms in her hands: light-brown skin, hair cropped short and black as a raven's wing, pupils pale as milk that seemed to look past the present and into memory. Her face had been hardened by life, softened only in the places children deserved softness. Around her a dozen children clustered on the cold floor — all about twelve, all with the same black hair and pale eyes, all wrapped in the fine but stiff robes of House Aldrak. Their faces were small and hungry for story; they leaned forward as if to catch every word by breath alone.
"One of the children answered, "Because of our bloodline. We inherit the strength of our progenitor."
The elder nodded as if she had expected that answer. "Correct."
The chamber looked like a hall from a king's dream: cream walls scored with gold filigree, a chandelier like a frozen sun, tapestries that swallowed sound. Banners hung from the pillars — a lion's head frozen mid-roar, mane carved into a hurricane of strokes, teeth bared like ivory daggers. Two swords crossed behind it with ritual precision, their blades bisecting the mane; a ring of knotwork bound them all together — fierce, ordered, and deliberate. The Aldrak sigil watched every child from the cloth as if it were alive. Beneath each lion, stitched in neat iron thread, ran the house motto: Vis et Imperium.
The elder continued. "Eight hundred years ago this snowy paradise we call home was a war-torn waste."
A girl lifted a hand. "Elder," she asked, voice small, "what was this place like eight hundred years ago?"
The elder's eyes flicked to her, slow as a blade finding its line. "The north used to be No-Man's-Land," she said. "A stretch of earth the Empire refused to feed. Monsters came like winter storms. Marauders carved petty kingdoms from ash. Abominations marked territory; cults and criminals claimed the land. It was wild. It was lawless. Men called it cursed."
A chill ran through the children as if the elder's words had opened a frozen window. One boy — thin-lipped, hands stained from training — muttered, "How did we come to rule such a place?"
"We did not inherit," she said. "We took it." Her voice sharpened. "Our first patriarch rode into chaos with a handful of men and a blade. He fought while others fled. He carved roads where wolves once howled, set posts where none stood, and bled until the land bent to his will. He made it our domain."
She paused; the room drew breath. Even the banners seemed to lean closer.
"He was the first to hold Aether in a human hand," she continued, quieter, the sentence falling like a coin into a pool. "Five thousand years of sleeping power woke in him. He was a Virel by blood, and he dared to seize what the world had hidden. He became Grand Duke of the frozen wastes. From him came the Aldrak clan."
The children's eyes widened. The eldest among them leaned forward, as if he could touch history.
The elder pointed at the sigil. "Where the lion stands, Aldrak rules. You will see our crest on gates, on helms; our name will be spoken in courts and on battlefields. It brings fear, respect, and authority. We are warborn."
A hush, the small sound of devotion. One boy traced the edge of the sewn lion on his sleeve, testing if it was real.
"Tonight," the elder said, and her voice dropped to a conspiratorial hush, "I will tell you of a night when the world itself convulsed — when the Seven walked the earth and the old orders bent. We call it the Age of Benediction. It is the time the world learned to fear and to worship at once. It is the time when light and ruin wrestled, and when the first Aldrak raised a sword that would be sung of for ages."
She smiled — not warm, not comforting, but the smile of someone about to start a long, fierce song. "Come closer, children," she told them. "Let me tell you how the world tore itself open. This is the story of our first patriarch and how Aldrak rose from that one man. The story of the strongest swordman to exist"
Tonight, she would tell them why the world still feared their house.
She gave a small, sharp smile. "I hope you're ready."