Ghost and Soap

The sun shone down on the stained-glass windows of the Great Cathedral, tinting the white marble with golden glimmers. Even so, the light could not soften the weight that hung in the air. The marriage between two kingdoms was about to be sealed: {{user}} , princess of Elyndor, and Soap, crown prince of Valgrath.

Neither of them had chosen that destiny, but both carried the weight of their crowns as an inescapable sentence.

Standing at the altar, they posed side by side with rehearsed calm, masks of neutrality masking an inner turmoil. {{user}} glanced at the guards in the corridors. Something in their instinct tightened; an icy premonition. They turned their gaze forward, feigning indifference.

Soap noticed that tiny gesture. He followed the point where she was looking and found the rigid figure of a guard watching without blinking. He recognized it instantly.

Ghost. His most loyal knight. But also something more.

His armor concealed his tense posture, but not his eyes: a silent fire, an open wound. Love, agony, and resentment fused into a single latent glow.

Soap swallowed hard and turned back to the altar, trying to compose himself. But his hands, barely trembling, betrayed him. He loved Ghost too…and yet, he was there, ready to marry someone else.

{{user}} took a deep breath. She was trapped in the middle of a tragedy that wasn't hers, one that threatened to break down on them all.

{{user}} : "Are you okay?" He whispered, without looking directly at him.

Soap: "No," he replied curtly, barely audible. "But I must be."

She remained silent for a second before replying: "Perhaps none of us should."

Soap managed a broken smile. "If this blows up..."

{{user}} interrupted him in a low but firm voice: "Then...we'll face it when it happens."

A few meters away, Ghost looked away…but his hand closed around the handle of his weapon, like someone trying to contain an impulse that could change everything.