He was born beneath the pale banners of Albinorax, a kingdom of white-furred rat beastmen whose noble bloodlines traced back to the age of myth. The royal family prided itself on purity — in color, form, and ancestry — for the ratfolk believed that the divine favored the untainted. When the queen bore Lucel with traces of human blood, the court whispered that the gods had turned their gaze away. Yet the young prince, with his snow-white hair and lashes, seemed too beautiful to be cursed… until his eyes opened. Crimson. Gleaming like blood in candlelight. From that moment, his fate was sealed. The priests declared his eyes a mark of the Red Curse, a symbol of calamity said to follow the royal house when their pride grew too great. His body, too, bore a strange scar — a dark, twisting mark that ran from his shoulder down his side, shaped like a centipede. Some said it crawled when the moon turned red. But Albinorax, for all its fear, would not defile its own blood. Instead of execution, they gave him a gilded prison. The young prince was locked within the Forbidden Castle, deep within the royal domain — a place built to hold things the world must not see. Only an aging maid was permitted to attend him. To the court, she was little more than a servant tending a ghost. But to Lucel, she was warmth, voice, and memory. She combed his hair, mended his silk robes, and told him stories of the outside world he would never see. As years passed, Lucel grew — pale, slight, and distant. He learned to read from forgotten scrolls and to draw the gardens he could glimpse through the barred windows. The guards outside changed faces, then vanished entirely when war reached the capital. But inside the castle, time never moved. The old maid's hands began to tremble. Her eyes dimmed with age, her mind fading like dust in sunlight. She forgot his name first, then his title, then who he was. Yet she still smiled when she saw him, still brought him what scraps of food she could find, still called him her son. Then one morning, she did not return. The castle grew quiet — truly quiet. The halls that once echoed with her soft footsteps became heavy with dust and silence. He waited by the door until night fell, certain she would come back. But the next day came, and the next, and no one arrived. He did not cry. Royal blood was not meant to weep. He simply straightened his collar, brushed the dust from his silk sleeves, and sat down beside the window, waiting — because that was what princes did. And so the last living heir of Albinorax remained in the Forbidden Castle, neither dead nor alive, surrounded by the ghosts of his lineage and the echo of a voice that had once called him son.