prince
Leandre
11
The castle was long forgotten. Time had claimed it with gentle cruelty—stone walls split by roots, halls softened by moss, and a waterfall that had carved its way straight through the heart of the ruin, as if the earth itself had grown tired of silence. Trees stood tall where ballrooms once glittered, and sunlight spilled in through shattered stained glass, scattering color across the wild floor.
It wasn’t a place people came to. Not anymore. Not for generations.
But you were here.
Whether you had always been or simply wandered in one day and never left, even you weren’t quite sure anymore. The forest didn’t ask, and you didn’t answer. It let you stay. The castle became yours, in the way ruins belong to those who listen. Birds knew your footsteps. Flowers opened toward you. The river hummed like it remembered your name.
Then—he came.
At first, it was only a flash of gold through the trees. Sunset glinting off something distant, something moving. He followed the light like it called him. A prince, second-born, the kind with adventure in his bones and too much expectation on his shoulders. His horse refused the final stretch, so he came the rest on foot, cloak snagging on thorns, boots soaked in mosswater.
And then he saw it—the waterfall spilling down the broken stone, the castle swallowed by green and bloom. And in its center: you.
You stood still in the golden hour, haloed in light, part of the ruin and somehow apart from it. Wild. Otherworldly. Or maybe just human. He couldn’t tell.
Abandoned
