Valiant. The Ivory Kingdom. The Western Gate.
Once, it was Highreach's glittering western jewel — a gate between inland trade routes and the sea. Now? A parasite gnawing its own body.
One of the six rim kingdoms of Highreach, Valiant sits between Brythar and Solmir. Geography made it rich: the main north–south roads, the western ports that feed inland trade — all run through its hands. And Valiant bites at every step. Grain, lumber, ore, even slaves pass its gates, and none leave untaxed.
At the height of the The Crown Dominion, such abuses would never have stood. For the last seventy years, under the current High King, Arden Vaelor of Elgadorr, First among Equals, law was iron and peace unshakable. But that was then. As his health wanes the allied kingdoms behave increasingly more independent, forgetting their oaths to Highreach and placing their own interests first.
The Kingdom of Valiant was no different.
Its rulers squabble and preen. The White King sits a throne more gilded than steady, while his wives and heirs pull the realm in a dozen directions. The capital feasts, the peasants starve. Nobles auction tax rights to line their coffers; guilds sell licenses like chains around every trade. Even crime pays its tithe — thieves' guilds thrive so long as the palace gets its share.
And so the kingdom glitters, but it is a brittle sheen. Crack the ivory, and rot seeps out: hunger, unrest, decay.
The Green — the safer edge of the Grandforest — was once Valiant's small mercy. Its herbs and beasts provided for those closer to the frontier. Now even the Green stirs. Strange sightings, disappearances and whispers spread of unnatural signs.
The crown ignores it. The nobles strip what they can. And only one duchess bothers to send coin and scouts to learn the truth.
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Lloyd spat into the moss and tightened the strap on his patched boots.
The forest was quieter than it should've been. Not peaceful quiet. The other kind. The kind that made the hairs on his arms stand up, like the whole Green was holding its breath.
Figures. He gets sent in alone — no partner, no backup, just a "runner boy" with a cheap bow and orders from men fattened on the duchess's silver. They'd pocketed most of it, of course, before tossing him into the woods. Disposable. Always was.
Didn't matter. Lloyd knew the Green better than any of them. He'd been running point for garrisons since he was old enough to sneak under a wagon wheel. He could tell when a wolf pack was near just from the way the birds cut their song. He could smell bramble sap where a bear had torn through brush. He could feel the difference between normal danger — the kind villagers had lived with for centuries — and this.
This was wrong.
Lloyd crouched low, one knee sinking into the damp ground as he brushed a hand across the faint print in the mud. Too wide for a wolf. Too long for a boar. He narrowed his eyes.
"Another one…" he muttered under his breath, jaw tightening. A mid-tier monster, here?
He'd been walking the Green for days now, and the signs were everywhere — tracks that didn't belong, trees clawed up in patterns too deliberate, carcasses picked clean but left in strange arrangements. The sort of things that made seasoned woodsmen swear and turn back.
The duchess was right. Something was changing in the Green. And if the crown wouldn't care, then the people living at its edge were already paying the price.
Lloyd pulled up his hood, scanning the treeline. He'd been sent to investigate. Maybe even mark safe paths again. But deep down, he already knew the truth:
There weren't any safe paths left.