The rain didn't just fall; it hammered against the kingdom like a god trying to break the world.
It started before dawn, a relentless, freezing assault that turned the morning into a blur of gray misery.
The wind found every crack in the palace walls, whistling through the stone, biting at exposed skin, forcing servants to huddle in their thin rags and guards to pull their cloaks so tight they looked like ghosts.
Winter had arrived.
And it was going to be a brutal, f*****g nightmare.
In the slave quarters, a pitiful group huddled around a fire that was more smoke than flame.
The wood was damp, rotten, and refused to burn properly.
The cold seeped into their bones, a deep, aching chill that no meager fire could stop.
"It hasn't even properly started," one slave muttered, her te
