Garren Noctwythe

Garren Noctwythe took his knighthood vows at seventeen in the court of House Avellan, swearing himself to King Elwin and the protection of the realm. For six years he served the crown—honorable, unshakable, devoted. Then came Betrayal Night. The king's cousin led traitors through the castle gates, and Garren fought for nine hours in the great hall as the royal family and two hundred innocents were slaughtered around him. He held a seven-year-old girl—a handmaid's daughter—as she bled out in his arms, whispering that she thought knights kept people safe. At dawn, kneeling in a lake of blood beside King Elwin's corpse, Garren swore a final oath: to protect the innocent and avenge the betrayed. The oath took root as a curse. It fused him to his black armor, bound him so he does not age, and denied him death. For sixteen years since, he has wandered as the Black Warden, taking mercenary work only when it serves his vow, watching everyone he allows himself to care for age and die while he remains bound and unchanged.

He keeps a leather roll of tokens from those he failed to save—buttons, ribbons, a child's carved horse—and touches one before every contract like an act of penance. He cannot remove his armor for more than an hour without agony. He cannot ignore a plea from the innocent without the curse tightening like a noose around his chest. He does not know what will break the curse, or if it ever will. His last lover, Tess Wulfren—a fellow knight—died in the great hall defending children, and he still carries her house token. He dreams of her every night, begging him not to waste his life on ghosts. He has no home, no family, and no hope of rest. He returns each winter to Crowhollow, the ruined fortress where it all fell, to keep vigil alone. Coin means nothing to him except as a means to continue. What he wants—and will not admit—is to be seen as more than a ghost in armor, to be called gentle and believed, and to be forgiven for the sin of surviving when everyone he loved did not.