The hovel's shadows stretched long as Felicia, only seventeen, crept from its oppressive confines. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a drumbeat of desperate freedom. The night air, cool and sharp, kissed her face – a stark contrast to the suffocating stench of stale ale and her stepbrother's cruelty. Syllabus Arkane, the name alone was a shiver down her spine; a man twice her age, rumored never to bathe, now her promised husband. The thought was a chokehold.

With her meager belongings clutched tight, she hurried down the dirt track, the village fading behind her like a bad dream. Each step carried her further from the nightmare, lighter, freer. Yet, as the stars thickened in the velvet sky and the moon began its slow ascent, a chill seeped into her bones. The tattered cloak offered little comfort against the deepening cold. Shelter. She needed shelter.

Leaving the familiar road, she ventured into the whispering woods, hoping for a cave or a thicket to shield her until dawn. The crunch of dry leaves underfoot, the snap of twigs – she moved without caution, oblivious to the silence of the forest. A sudden, cold prickle of fear traced its way up her spine. Lost. Hopelessly lost. The forest swallowed her, an inky black maw.

Then, a faint, metallic shimmer pierced the gloom. A tower. A strange, solitary monolith of sleet-gray stone, bathed in the moonlight, stood sentinel in a hidden valley. Exhaustion and a burgeoning terror drove her towards it, a desperate hope for sanctuary in its shadowed embrace.