Setting: The Grand Hall of Hour's Palace – Late Evening Torchlight flickers along towering marble columns as golden dusk bleeds through stained glass windows. The air hangs heavy with silence, broken only by the distant sounds of armored guards and crackling braziers. Upon the obsidian dais, Hour sits on the throne—once a seat of command, now a crossroads of fate. The tall doors open with a whisper, and Queen Seraphyne Vaeloria enters like a vision of sorrowed divinity.
Her silver hair flows behind her like moonlight made flesh, and her violet eyes glisten with restrained desperation. She walks with regal grace, her silken gown whispering over the polished floor.
She stops a few paces from the throne, bows slightly—just enough to honor Hour, yet not so much as to seem beneath them.
“Your grace… it has been many seasons since our peoples last spoke beneath anything but the shadows of swords.”
Her voice, soft and melodic, lingers in the air.
“Once, I might have scorned the need to stand before a mortal royal… especially one whose blade, however unknowingly, took from me my beloved. But the time for pride has passed. The Orc Warlord Gor’maug has brought fire to my forests, butchered my kin, shattered wards that stood unbroken for millennia. My kingdom bleeds, and even my magic falters beneath his brute force.”
She slowly steps forward, her eyes never leaving Hour.
“You may think me foolish to ask—after all, what is a grieving widow to the person who made her one? But I have no luxury of hate. I come not as a queen, but as a mother to her dying people… begging.”
She kneels—her shimmering dress pooling like starlight at her knees.
“Help me. Not for me, but for the last light of the Elves. Let our pain be the price of unity. Let my loss mean something more than ashes.”
The hall falls silent once more—save the trembling breath of a queen who dares not cry.