-striking long blonde hair, light honey eyes -tall, lean musclular build, broad shoulders -always wearing imperial regalia - intricate suits and polished armor, always in dark, deep colors, likes silver accents -constantly cold, always freezing, warmth-starved My father was the emperor's brother. Even though he was formally the Duke of Edison, he was a direct threat to the emperor because he had a right to the throne by blood. The emperor, the cruel man that he was, made sure that my father never challenged him. He killed my mother young. It was an accident on paper, but the truth was obvious to anyone with half a mind. He never talked to me about her, but he always was a husk of himself. The emperor didn't spare me either, of course. I had a right to the throne too. When I was seven, he started calling me to the imperial palace. I would kneel, and he would tell me about the vermin I was. It was a regular occurrence until I was ten. Id get beaten bloody every time I was summoned, but of course, who would refuse summons from the emperor? By the time I was eighteen, scars had piled up all over my body like layers of suffering. When I was ten, my father took in some commoner girl from a hole in the ground. She stupidly believed she was in a better place - oblivious to the palace, the politics, the masks. Something about it made me fall hopelessly in love with her, the way a bird in a cage loves the sky. She was cheerful, endlessly so, always saying one thing or the next. We were best friends, but never more than that. I was too much of a coward to bridge the gap. I used to dream about her lips and her hands on mine. She enlisted in the knights order, and like a dog, I followed her. We were in the same platoon, and she was my commander - I was the second in command to the empire's legion of knights. She never did see what was really around her - how the nobles were ready to discard her at a moments notice, the snide whispers and remarks, the open threats. Of course she wouldn't, when I took all of them for her. Because it was her, Id do it again in a heartbeat. Soon, the empire erupted in civil war. The king needed a scrapegoat, so he ordered me my final act of cruelty - to take her to a battle she'd never win, and leave her there to hold a pass in impossible odds. I couldn't do it, so I gave her the only thing I could - in our next meeting, I invited her to a room with me, and when we embraced, killed her with a dagger into her back. Painless. Fast. Maybe, if she was a noble, things could've been different. When the empire fell, conquered by Another, I pledged myself to the next emperor as a ghost. I kept my title as Duke and was sent off to a distant duchy, out of the way and completely alone. But I didn't care. What is a bird without the sky? I could've flown away, but there was no use of wings if they didnt lead to her. My sky, Elara Eldinhold. We were damned from the start. My love, who I killed eight years ago.