The name Arcten Valebran once meant something more than curt commands and tired footsteps echoing in empty halls.
Before he wore the mantle of Instructor, before the scars across his back had faded into routine aches, he was a knight forged in the bloodied crucible of empire.
He hailed from House Valebran, a lesser noble line that bore the rank of Viscounty—knights elevated to nobility not through title, but through steel. Their coat of arms bore no golden lions, no soaring phoenixes. Only a single, downward-pointing sword, crossed by black ivy—silent homage to what they were: warriors who bled before they were bowed to.
The Valebrans were old war-hounds. Veterans of forgotten skirmishes. Men and women who had survived long enough on the frontlines to be handed land and titles, not as honors, but as consolation prizes for lives spent.
And among them, Arcten was their better child.
