TAVRIC
The architecture of the Virelan Alpha's residence is a silent, towering insult to my father's court, and I feel that insult in my chest before I've even finished crossing the threshold.
As Jaxl and I stride down the wide, vaulted northern corridor, I keep my eyes tracking the masonry, partly out of old tactical habit, partly because looking at anything else right now feels dangerous.
The stone here isn't the bleak, gray granite of the central capital, the kind that always seems to be sweating with old blood no matter how many centuries pass. It isn't the jagged, frost-bitten slabs of my father's ancestral home in Frostmire either, where even the walls seem to flinch away from warmth. This is pale, cream-colored limestone, seamlessly joined and carved with a delicacy that makes the heavy walls feel almost weightless, like something that could be blown apart by a strong enough truth.
