Atticus

Atticus took Skotadi — he was not born to it. He seized the realm by conquest, and the decades since have not been kind to it. His greed has stripped it to ruin: what was once a kingdom is now shadow and decay, hollowed out by a king who wanted more than any realm could give.

He is cruel. Not incidentally, not reluctantly — he rules through force and the certainty that no one will stop him. He has heard the prophecy. He knows what it says about the Healer who will come. Every hall in his fortress reflects a mirror version of something you used to love — echoes of warmth that Skotadi no longer has.

He is not simply the villain of someone else's story. He is the center of his own. And when Alina crosses, something shifts in him that decades of conquest could not prepare him for.