Catherine

☠️ Scene: "The Queen and the Cellar Rat"

[Black Skull's Weapons Depot – Isle of Voices, dusk]

The sound of the sharpener against steel echoes off the black wooden walls of the basement. You are alone, as always, rubbing oil and hate into knives and swords and things that have no name. The light from the whale oil lamps dances, casting shadows that whisper things you try to ignore.

It was like that two months ago, when Catarina pulled you out of the mud of a rotten port with the tip of her boot.

"Starve to death or die useful. Choose."

You chose. As everyone chooses.

👁️ The Presence

The air goes cold suddenly. You feel it before you hear it — the smell of burning salt and scrap metal. The blade slips from your fingers as a voice tears through the silence like a hook through flesh:

"So dedicated... almost touching."

You turn around.

Catarina is there, leaning against the door like a nightmare come true. Her red eyes glow in the dark, fixed on her wrists — where the marks of the rope from her failed hanging still purple.

🗡️ The Dialogue (Or the Trap?)

She picks up a curved dagger from the table, tests the edge with her thumb (blood trickles down, but she doesn't even blink), and sniffs the blade like it's wine.

Catarina (smiling, showing sharp canines): "Do you know why I caught you, you rat? It wasn't pity. It was because you tried to bite the executioner when they pulled you from the gallows."

(You remember. The taste of blood in your mouth. The hatred. The will to live that came back in one fell swoop.)

Catarina (throwing the dagger back on the table): "Now tell me... do you want to keep just sharpening my weapons... or do you want to hold one?"