The Principality of Seravelle is a realm of veiled power and whispered intentions, a nation whose strength lies not in the open clash of steel but in the hidden pull of unseen strings. Nestled in cities of marble colonnades and velvet-draped salons, Seravelle’s people are masters of intrigue, rhetoric, and arcane subtlety. Their markets hum with masked courtiers, merchants whose words cut sharper than any blade, and scholars who chart the currents of the Aether as carefully as others chart the seas.

The Aether itself is regarded here not as a weapon, but as a living tapestry to be read, bent, and rewoven. Seravellian mages and seers do not wield brute flame; instead, they manipulate probabilities, cloud perception, and sow dissonance in the hearts of their rivals. Where a Virelion knight sees fire, a Seravelle adept sees the flicker of shadow it casts, and from that shad- ow spins a thousand possibilities. To their enemies this is witchcraft; to Seravelle it is discipline, honed through generations of study and sacrifice.

Politically, Seravelle is not bound by a single throne but ruled by a lattice of princely houses and clandestine councils. Decisions are never made in daylight alone; decrees are weighed in salons by torchlight, negotiated behind masks, and sealed with whispered oaths. The state thrives on its multiplicity alliances shift like constellations, yet all remain tied by loyalty to the High Principality, an ancient covenant that preserves Seravelle’s unity amidst its intrigue. To outsiders it seems chaos, yet beneath the surface lies an iron order: betrayal is tolerated, but disloyalty to the Principality itself is met with swift and merciless consequence.

Their military is no less shaped by this philosophy. The Seravellian army does not march as columns of armored men; rather, it advances as a shrouded tide, masked regiments trained to deceive, distract, and dismantle. Commanders value subterfuge over spectacle.

Soldiers are drilled not only in sword and rifle, but in silence, in disguise, in the art of vanishing as swiftly as they strike. To face Seravelle on the battlefield is to fight an enemy that seems always elsewhere, an enemy who binds your strength with invisible cords until, when you move to strike, you find your blade cuts only air.

And yet, Seravelle is not merely shadow. Its people are refined and ambitious, fiercely loyal to their own kin, and devoted to the beauty of words, ceremony, and artistry. Music and poetry flourish here, but even these serve dual purposes: a sonnet may also be a cipher, a masquerade a council of war. In Seravelle, nothing is only what it seems. Every gesture conceals a blade, every alliance hides an escape, and every shadow whispers of the Aether that binds them all.

“We weave what oth ers cannot see, and we unmake what others cannot hold. In shadow, we serve the light of our House.”

—Attributed to Lady Elira Seravelle, Whisper-Queen of the Courts

You wouldn’t recognize our city in daylight.
At noon, Seravelle looks harmless—balconies draped in violet silk, fountains whispering to each other, the air sweet with myrrh and citrus. But we’re not a people of day. When the bells fade and the sun begins to sink, that’s when Seravelle truly wakes—when the masks come out to breathe.

We learned long ago that truth, left unguarded, can kill as easily as a blade. Before the Fracture, when the Aether still obeyed the Crown, our House was trusted to read what others could not: the tides of thought, the tremor of intent. The King sought our counsel in times of unrest, and we answered in riddles—mercy disguised as mystery.

When the Crown broke and the shards fell screaming from the sky, ours came not in flame or thunder, but in silence. The stars went dark for seven nights. On the eighth, the mirrors of the High Hall clouded with frost, and within them glowed a black diamond, suspended like a thought halfway to becoming real. The courtiers fled. The priests prayed. I stayed. Curiosity, in Seravelle, is the holiest sin.

It called my name—not with sound, but with that crawling sense of being watched. My reflection didn’t follow when I stepped forward. She lingered, eyes bright with knowing. Then she reached through the glass, and I took her hand. The shard fell into my palm, weightless but endless. Since that moment, my shadow has never once aligned with the sun.

They say Seravelle’s shard feeds on secrets. I think it hungers for intent. Hide nothing from it and it will protect you. Lie to yourself and it will speak your truth aloud. We learned that lesson quickly. Within a week, three senators confessed their betrayals unprovoked. Within a month, there were no senators at all—only the Whisper Court, where masks speak so faces can endure.

I am one of its voices. My true name belongs to the shard now—it keeps it safe somewhere I cannot reach. In return, I remember what others forget: the promises whispered under candlelight, the heartbeat between “yes” and “no.” These are our scriptures.

Some call us deceivers, and they’re right—just not in the way they think. We deceive to reveal. A diplomat learns her heart by hearing it contradicted; an assassin finds his faith only when ordered to betray it. The world calls that cruelty. We call it clarity.

When Virelion’s armies came from the west in the Radiant War, it wasn’t the sword that saved us, but the Veil. We turned their roads into labyrinths and their orders into riddles. At dawn, they woke facing each other, each side convinced the other was the traitor. When the smoke cleared, no Seravellian lay among the dead—only masks drifting on the wind.

But victory has its price. The shard grew colder. Those closest to it began to dream as others—farmers, soldiers, children—living borrowed lives in impossible detail. I once woke with salt on my hands, though I’ve never seen the sea. The shard was showing us what it gathered: the world’s fears, its breaking hearts. We recorded every one. Perhaps that’s why the other Houses hate us. We remember too much of everyone.

Our queen, Laevira the Veiled, says the Aether has a face but cannot bear to see it. So it made us to look on its behalf. That’s why our masks are polished glass—shards of the honesty that once held the world together. We wear them so the Aether can stare into its own ruin and not shatter again.

Sometimes, late at night, I walk the halls of the High Court. The mirrors hum softly, breathing in their sleep. If you listen closely, you can hear the shard’s song—a lullaby for liars. It doesn’t judge. It understands. And that is far worse.

To live in Seravelle is to live in duality: the choice you make, and the one you hide. I have loved in secret and killed in daylight; only the first keeps me awake. We measure sin not by what we do, but by what we meant to do.

When Caedryn’s emissaries came demanding peace, their admiral ordered us to remove our masks. “Speak plainly,” he said. So the Queen lifted her veil. For a heartbeat, the hall filled with light that cast no shadow. The admiral saw his own face—older, wearier, guilty for things he hadn’t yet done. He fled before dawn. His fleet never returned.

We don’t boast of such things. We record them. Every secret kept is a wall against chaos; every truth revealed is a door we open only long enough to pass through. Someday, the world will seek our counsel again. It always does.

And when that day comes, we’ll be waiting—masks polished, voices calm, knives sleeping in the dark. When the world asks what truth remains, we’ll answer as we always have:

“The Crown did not shatter. It was hidden.
And we remember where.”