Clarina Duvall was born beneath a blood-orange sky that hung heavy over the Duvall estate, a name etched deep into the annals of the empire's martial legacy.
Theirs was a house of steel and silence, of banners that never bowed and blades that never dulled.
The Duvalls did not raise children, they forged them.
She was the first daughter of Lord Viremont, a man with a stare as sharp as the swords he crafted and a voice rarely raised, for it never needed to be.
The halls of their manor echoed with discipline rather than laughter, lined with portraits of ancestors who had all died on battlefields — never in their beds.
From the moment Clarina could walk, she was placed among the squires, sparring with boys twice her size.
There were no lullabies, only the rhythmic strikes of wooden blades.
No praise, only silence or correction.
The warmth she craved was replaced with cold washbasins and frost-covered dawn drills.
