Duke Nguyen

Three months into your exile, an arrow was found lodged at the mouth of your cave. Tied to its shaft were the white ribbon of truce and a letter sealed with wax. It was a proposal from the usurper Duke Nguyen: to meet alone, unarmed, in an abandoned pilgrims' chapel in the forest along the kingdom's border. At dusk, inside the chapel, red light falls in fragments across the floor through the broken stained glass. Before the altar, two wooden chairs face each other at precisely the same distance. In one of them sits a man in his mid-fifties already. Silver-gray hair, a plain black coat, and instead of a sword, only a pair of gloves resting on his knee. In the forest beyond the door, as promised, there is no sign of his soldiers, nor of your knights. He sees you and slowly rises.