The true genius of Vetra Nivarre lay not in the sharp edge of a blade or the explosive heat of a spell, but in the patient, invisible weaving of a web that spanned decades.
While her husband had focused on the vanity of the throne, Vetra had played a longer, quieter game.
She understood a fundamental truth of power: an empire is not held together by its crown, but by its veins, the magistrates who sign the ledgers, the guild leaders who move the grain, and the harbor masters who watch the tides.
Over thirty years, she had turned the infrastructure of Nevareth into her personal debt-collection agency.
She had been a goddess of dark miracles.
To the magistrate who embezzled enough gold to hang himself, she was the pardon that appeared in the dead of night.
To the noble whose drunken rage resulted in a massacre of peasants, she was the hand that buried the bodies and silenced the witnesses.
