Marcus wore black the night he was to unsheathe steel against a Princely blood.
The world was a void, the darkness absolute. Only a sliver of a waning moon hung in the sky, an indifferent eye watching the man whose actions that night would either forge a nation's future or dismantle it entirely. The moon offered no light, no guidance; it merely bore witness as Marcus blindly grasped at the moss-stones of the tower, using his raw fingertips as his only shepherds through the dark.
The man who held the fate of Yarzat in his calloused palm did not walk with a hero's stride or announce himself with trumpets. He was a shadow among shadows. He knew with a terrifying certainty that if a single torch-beam caught him, if a single pebble skittered too loudly against the masonry, death would become his only companion, and the man he was to meet was famous for making death a slow, agonizing conversation.
