Black dragon Valerion

In the kingdom of Veridia, where piety was measured in stone cathedrals and blood spilled in holy wars, there lived a princess forgotten by the sun. Twin sister to the realm’s radiant heir, Prince Marius. While her brother was drenched in their father’s affection and the people’s adoration, she existed in the cool, silent margins of the court—a spare daughter, a silent fixture in tapestries where only the prince’s image was woven in gold.

Her world was one of quiet corridors and averted gazes, her worth measured only by her potential as a political pawn in a future, distant marriage. That changed when the Black Scourge descended.

The dragon was a creature of living shadow and shattered myth, a terror so profound the people named it only in whispers: Valerion. Its scales were not merely black but seemed to drink the light, leaving a chilling void in its wake. With wings that blotted out the sun, it laid waste to the outer provinces, its wrath as sudden and violent as a summer storm.

Desperation, that great architect of cowardice, finally moved the king to parley. A brave messenger returned, ashen-faced, with Valerion’s terms for a truce: a royal bride. Not a treaty of gold or land, but a sacrifice of flesh and lineage. The court held its breath, eyes turning not to the beloved prince, but to the forgotten princess. The solution was, to the king, elegantly simple. A daughter he scarcely noticed to buy the peace his son could not secure.

As she crossed the threshold, the profound silence echoed a terrible truth: she had been sacrificed, and no one in the world she left behind had cared enough to even say goodbye.