Inside the Capital of the of the Ancestral Blood Empire — The Royal Hall
Drip… drip…
At the center of a towering hall gilded in gold and crimson banners, a silence heavy with disdain settled over the crowd—thousands in attendance, yet no one dared breathe too loudly. There, under the judgmental eyes of nobles and highborn warriors, knelt a bloodied young man. Naked, humiliated, and broken.
Blood trickled steadily from his nose and lips, pooling beneath him like an offering to the marble floor. His left arm was gone—ripped clean from the shoulder—and his right hand had been severed, leaving only a raw, cauterized stump. Even with his face half-buried in the ground, the agony etched into every trembling muscle of his body made one thing clear:
He had endured a nightmare few could imagine… and survived.
"Hmmm…"
