[25 August: 19:42 Post Meridiem]
[Verdantis: Capital City]
The castle walls of Verdantis were steeped in memory. They loomed over Dante as if watching him with an invisible gaze, ever-constant. Moving through these halls was almost therapeutic, though not in any way that could be called pleasant. The sensation was more akin to pressing on an old wound—not to cause further pain, but to reaffirm that the pain was still there, that it had never truly left.
His gaze, hidden behind the impassive alloy of his helmet, studied everything with a scrutinizing gaze, his white-lined cape flowing behind him with each step. The detailed engravings on the castle's pillars, the subtle accents that decorating its towering arches, the cool marble beneath his sabatons—it was all different, yet eerily the same. It had been three hundred years, after all, long enough for Verdantis to reshape itself, to rebuild what was lost in war and time.
