Born of Blood, Bound by Hate
“Tonight we prove them wrong.”
Stepping alone into the neon-lit backstreets, Maverick felt the old city’s pulse thrumming against his eardrums. Rain began to fall in quicksilver beads, igniting the pavement with frantic sparks of light. As he wandered, the memory of the council’s passionate proclamations clung to him: songs of revolution, promises of glory, dreams of ancestral dominion. Yet beneath that fervor, his heart stirred with uneasy questions. He had been raised on tales of Delacroix’s triumphs—feasts around marble pyres, blood-red banners unfurled atop moonlit ramparts—but had never witnessed a celebration without the tang of violence. Could true honor be found only in conquest? Or