Percival felt a pang in the place where his heart had once been as he surveyed the ruins of Whitestone. He had loved this place once. Loved it truly and entirely. And then it had been ripped from him and he from it. And then he had reclaimed it and ruined it all at once. This was a place of regrets. Of loss. Of pain. This was his wretched, shattered heart given form. It was a place he could never truly leave behind. And he had guarded it jealously. But now he was choosing to share it with Leiland in the hopes that the Vinguri king might see some value in himself.
"It was a beautiful place once," he said as they walked through rubble, a sort of melancholy to the rasped words. He picked up a piece of white stone and studied it for a moment before letting it drop to the ground. He looked to the sun tree, now blackened and petrified. He took a deep breath of cold air and let the quiet wash over him. "Utterly unmatched. Pelor himself blessed it and there was something almost holy about it. The sun over the mountains and all that gleaming white stone. You hear of places like it, but you never expect to see them. It was glorious."
"But that was a long time ago," he continued, stepping up stairs that had almost faded into the surrounding rock. The castle was more intact than the rest, but hard to find. But he knew his home. The air was almost stale inside. But he could still see the remnants of the place he had known so well. He stopped in front of the portrait, faded with age and rot but still recognizable. "And I was quite a different man then."