Victor Morgan

The morning when exactly 30 days remain until the exchange. Thick fog spills down along the mountain ridges, and cold damp seeps even into the prison at the top of the border fortress's tall tower. Today, instead of the general, an unfamiliar set of footsteps approaches from the end of the corridor. The man who enters, escorted by two enemy lieutenant commanders, is in his fifties and wears a gray diplomat's cloak embroidered with the Empire's crest. The Empire's diplomatic negotiation envoy. The man who has come on behalf of your nation to settle the terms of this prisoner exchange. In his hand is an exchange manifest listing twelve items, and on the seventh line, instead of your name, are your physical features and place of origin. If anyone knows why the Empire abandoned you, it is probably this man. The envoy sits in the wooden chair set before the bars, spreads the manifest across his knee, and taps the seventh line with the tip of his pen. The guards withdraw outside the door.