There was a silent tension smothering the Gilded Dominion.
It seeped into stone walls, crept beneath the hems of velvet cloaks, and clung to every polished corner of Goldhaven's opulence. Whispers roamed the marbled halls like ghosts. never loud, never confirmed, but always present. Servants moved faster. Doors were closed more gently. Eyes watched the shadows now, longer than they watched the throne.
It had been days since Corvin Blackmoor was named Duke of Raven's Nest. With the lands surrounding it folded into his fief, the elevation had already caused unease. But unease turned to something colder when the news of Count Emual's death swept through the court.
Not merely dead, erased.
His estate, once bustling with generations of relatives and of minor nobility, servants, scribes, and guards, had become a graveyard of silence. There were no survivors. Not one soul.
