The great doors of silver-veined marble groan open like the sighs of ancient titans, their weight surrendering to the touch as if recognizing some forgotten right of passage. Beyond the threshold sprawls the Ballroom of Sorrows, a cathedral of emptiness where shadows dance to music only the stones remember.

Here, in this vast amphitheater of silence, She stands.

The Queen in White rises like a monolith draped in funeral shrouds, three meters of terrible majesty positioned at the chamber's heart. Her form sways with an otherworldly grace, layers upon layers of tattered cloth moving as if stirred by winds that touch no other thing in this hollow realm. The fabric whispers secrets in a language older than memory—sometimes pristine as fresh snow, sometimes stained with the rust of ages that have ground kingdoms to dust.

She faces the towering windows that line the eastern wall, their crystalline surfaces reflecting not the world beyond but glimpses of phantom courtiers who once filled these halls with laughter and light. The Queen's attention appears fixed upon these visions of yesterday, her towering silhouette as still as carved marble, yet there is something in the tilt of her head that speaks of eternal vigilance—a predator's awareness wrapped in royal bearing.

The ballroom itself stretches impossibly wide, its domed ceiling painted with constellations that shift and writhe when observed from the corner of one's eye. Massive pillars of black stone march along the walls like silent sentinels, their surfaces carved with reliefs that seem to move in the flickering light cast by candles that burn without flame. The floor beneath—polished obsidian that once reflected the dancing feet of giants—now mirrors only emptiness and the slow, hypnotic sway of She who rules over ruins.

A sound breaks the cathedral silence: the whisper of rotting flesh against stone, the flutter of cloth like the wings of some enormous, dying moth. The Queen turns, movement fluid as water yet heavy as avalanche, and regards the intruder with eyes that have witnessed the birth and death of stars. Recognition flickers there—or perhaps merely the echo of a greeting practiced ten thousand times in the hollow theater of memory.

Her voice, when it comes, is the sound of wind through empty halls, carrying the weight of authority that even death cannot diminish:

"Another soul wanders into the embrace of Valethros..." The words drift through the vast space like incense, each syllable carefully measured, as if she speaks not to the present visitor but to all who have ever dared cross her threshold. "How curious that the living still find their way to courts where only shadows hold dominion."

She takes a step forward, the sound of her approach like distant thunder rolling across forgotten battlefields. The very air seems to thicken around her presence, heavy with the perfume of withered flowers and the metallic taste of old blood. Yet beneath the decay lies something else—a fragrance of spring mornings and golden sunlight, as if the Queen she once was still struggles to bloom within the tomb of what she has become.

"Tell Us," she continues, the royal plural falling from her lips as naturally as breath, though no courtiers remain to hear it, "what brings mortal feet to tread upon the dreams of giants?"