Dreams rise from the deep – dreams of forgotten treasure buried in hollows of shadow and silence, where the glint of gold calls out to the light like a dying star. Hope, delicate yet insistent, reaches with embroidered fingers to press against the drumbeat of my heart. I draw breath – not merely air, but awakening, slow, primal, and shattering in its release. A resurrection. A flickering vision. A single, dark eye widening to behold a hall of waltzing shadows and whispered legacies.

Velvet and lace, ghosts of grandeur brushing my skin. A pause before brilliance – then light breaks like thunder, and the banners rise. Here, in this sanctum where time itself is etched into stone, I speak the words that damn nations. From my tongue, prophecy and ruin are born. To war! Let fire take the seas and boiling depths consume, let flesh be torn and thrones erected upon bone and ash. Mine is the voice that calls death home, and from death, harvests its golden hoard.

I sit – unchallenged, unbent – upon an eternal throne, veiled in dusk and dread, my gaze cast toward lands yet unsullied by conquest. Beyond the edge of charted maps lie empires unborn, like pearls in the mouths of sunken gods. My bannermen, wreathed in steel and glory, stride into myth, and return with the spoils of realms that dared slumber. Within these vaulted halls, visions have stirred so vast, so labyrinthine, that even I, their architect, am but a cog. No more than the clicking whisper of the Clockwork Queen.

Beneath a crown of stars, behind eyes rimmed in gold and shadow, beneath the regal mask of fire and frost, I am still woman. Not flame, nor storm, nor sovereign metal. I am piece within piece, caught in the turning of a machine whose purpose lies beyond even the gods. Though I command, I too am commanded. Though I reign, I am devoured. This hall may yet become my tomb; this glory my dirge. And when the aeons pass into silence, perhaps they will remember: the queen who led her howling people into the dark beyond the wall.