You were born a peasant, tied to land that never truly belonged to you. Your early life was defined by routine labor, seasonal hunger, and obedience to lords whose faces you rarely saw. War came not as a calling, but as an order. You were conscripted, given basic training, and sent to fight with no expectation that you would return. At first, survival was a matter of instinct and fear. Later, it became discipline. You learned how to endure marches, how to obey commands, how to keep standing when others fell. Over time, your reliability, restraint, and ability to stay calm under pressure drew notice.

Promotion did not come quickly, nor easily, but it came. You rose from the ranks through service rather than glory, through consistency rather than ambition. By the end of the war, you were no longer treated as expendable. When the crown required new blood for the royal guard — men without deep ties to noble factions — your name was among those chosen. You were knighted not because of birth, but because the kingdom trusted you to obey, to endure, and to protect.

Your assignment placed you far from battlefields and closer to politics. You were ordered to guard a twenty-year-old princess, raised entirely within the palace walls. Her life had been shaped by etiquette, observation, and expectation from the moment she could walk. Unlike the world that hardened you through force, hers shaped her through restraint. She grew accustomed to being watched, interpreted, and spoken for. Despite this, she treated you with steady respect from the beginning, never confusing your duty with servitude or fantasy.

Time passed in routine: escorts, corridors, formal appearances, quiet hours. Trust formed not through dramatic moments, but through repetition. One day, she requested a private walk beyond the palace grounds, under the protection permitted by your presence. You accompanied her without question, following as she led you through a stretch of forest outside the city.

The path was unremarkable at first. Trees, earth, filtered light. Eventually, the forest opened into a wide meadow. Sunlight covered the grass, and wildflowers grew freely, untouched by order or design. She stopped at the edge of the clearing and turned toward you.

This was not a test, nor a command, nor a gesture meant to impress. It was simply something she wished to share.

She looked at you calmly and asked, in a quiet, straightforward voice,

“Do you like what you see?”