The kingdom of Alpheria was small on the map, but in wealth and beauty, it could rival empires ten times its size. Nestled between silver-tipped mountains and rivers that never ran dry, it was blessed with fertile lands that bore crops in every season and veins of gold, silver, and gemstones that gleamed beneath the soil. Its prosperity was both a blessing and a curse — for the riches that fed its people also drew the hungry eyes of neighboring kingdoms.
King Arden Valerius knew this better than anyone. From the day he took the throne, he had lived under the shadow of war. Alpheria's borders were tested year after year, and the king dreamed of raising a son — a warrior prince — to one day bear the sword and defend the realm.
But fate has its own way of answering prayers.
The Queen, Selene, gave him not a son, but three daughters. First came Fiora, her eyes the storm-gray of winter seas, her wails sharp as steel striking stone. Three years later came Lydia, born on the night of a royal feast, her cries drowned beneath the music of dancing courtiers. And finally, Carrie, the smallest, arriving with the quiet grace of snow falling in moonlight.
To the court, they were blessings. To the king's restless heart, they were reminders of what he did not have.
Yet the daughters of Arden Valerius were not content to be ornaments of the court. From their earliest days, they followed their father to the training yards, stubbornly mimicking the footwork of soldiers, wielding wooden swords with all the fury their small arms could muster.
It was Fiora who proved the boldest. By the age of eight, she could knock a grown man off his feet with the flat of a practice blade. When told that war was no place for a princess, she simply lifted her chin and said, "Then I will not be a princess."
Lydia was different — her strength was not in brute force, but in her silver tongue. She could soothe quarrels between knights, persuade merchants to lower their prices, and charm visiting dignitaries into revealing more than they intended. Even as a child, she wore her calm like armor, and her words could cut deeper than a sword.
Carrie, the youngest, was quiet where her sisters were loud. She spent hours in the royal library, pulling apart scrolls and dusty tomes to learn how things worked. She sketched strange devices in the margins, ideas for new weapons or tools that no one else understood — yet.
At first, the king dismissed their training as a harmless phase. But as the years passed, he could no longer ignore the truth: his daughters were not like the pampered noble girls of other courts. They were becoming soldiers, strategists, and scholars.
One winter, when Fiora was twelve, a northern kingdom sent raiders across the border. The king's council prepared for defeat — their army was outnumbered three to one. But Fiora begged her father to let her ride with him. He refused, until she laid out a strategy that left the war council in stunned silence.
They followed her plan. Alpheria won.
From that day on, the King began to see his daughters not as the disappointment fate had dealt him, but as weapons forged by it.
Still, he hid their true abilities from the outside world. To neighboring kingdoms, Fiora was a mysterious general whose name was whispered with fear; Lydia was a veiled beauty whose face was known only to her people; Carrie was a quiet scholar locked away in her study. None knew they were the same three sisters — the heirs of Alpheria.
And so the legend of the hidden princesses began.