The Seventh Life Of The Soulbound Villainess
Valenor did not welcome people like me.
It tolerated them. Processed them. Absorbed them into its machinery the way a great palace absorbs dust — not noticing, not caring, simply continuing to function around their presence until they either became useful or disappeared. The capital city stretched for kilometers in every direction from the imperial palace at its center, a metropolis of black stone and silver-veined marble and streets wide enough for six carriages abreast, perpetually crowded, perpetually loud, perpetually smelling of coal smoke and river water and the particular concentrated ambition of a city where everyone had come to become something.