The castle had been constructed upon the crest of a hill, and built in such a way that, were the sun to set behind it, the last sight the world would have of daytime would not be the star, but the castle itself. Giant towers spiralled up into the clouds, huge out houses, fortress walls and all manner of gateways and courtyards formed, rather than a building, an entire country, set apart from the rest of the world and frowning severely down on any who happened to cast a look up, towards it. Such was the formidable size of the construction that, if a messenger or guest arrived for the King, they would have no hope whatsoever of reaching him, as the castle was a myriad of corridors, of buildings, and, while the central tower of the throne room was perpetually visible, it was all but inaccessible, severed from the world by the sheer complexity of the labyrinth around it. Still, it was a majestic sight, built entirely of gold, while the rest of the castle, its walls, its guard houses, were hewn from a white stone which seemed never to lose its shine, regardless of weather conditions or the bombardment of age. Once, in its long history, the castle had been assaulted by some obscure army from the North. Unsure of how they ought to tackle such an obstacle, or how they could ever hope to conquer a King who was so distant, so removed from them that he may very well not exist, they had laid siege to the walls, hoped to starve the occupants into submission. The castle was so large, though, that it inevitably housed entire fields, great spans of farmland, and, far from their home, marooned outside the impenetrable walls, the invaders had simply succumbed to age and died. All the while, the castle had remained imperious, the central eye of the throne room turret gazing critically down upon the skeletons littering its perimeter. 

Many of the Kings were skeletons, too. The nature of the castle, and the scale of its outer perimeter, meant that few could adequately or truly find their way to the outside world and, as such, when an old King died, his body was not transported far, but buried beneath the throne room, in a crypt which held the bones of countless generations. Inevitably, this meant that the current monarch was forced to seat himself atop the ruined remains of his ancestry. Courtiers came and went, but in time they, too, aged and died, and invariably they were replaced with fewer and fewer servants, owing to the isolated nature of the throne room, and the maze surrounding it. Isolation and loneliness grew to pervade the reigns of the later monarchs, who could perfectly well see the world from the height of their tower top throne room, but possessed no means of genuinely accessing it. This was how the situation had continued for countless years, with seemingly no hope of resolution, as the various Kings, increasingly nameless in time, drifted further from the outside, and further from the lands they had once ruled, the lands they had constructed the castle to subdue. As the dynasty drew ever closer to expiration, though, it was the eyes of King Faren which looked out across the infinite grounds of his castle, and, afforded the elevated perspective which only the King could be offered, he wondered at the world outside, at the Forgotten Kingdom. With no courtiers to attend to him, and with only a single, aged, half blind guard on the palace doors, the King shrugged off his ceremonial gown, retrieved  a cloak better suited to travel, and set out. Almost at once, upon leaving the tower, that grand perspective which had, mentally at least, suggested a coherent path to the world, vanished, and the King was trapped entirely in the winding courtyards and buildings of the castle. Holding aloft his compass, he judged that, if only he were to travel straight in any direction, he would eventually escape, King Faren began to move through the castle in a northerly direction, although, to preserve his travel, he was forced to make numerous looping detours, travelling perhaps East for a day, before some corridor allowed him to return to his Northerly pursuit. 

Travelling thus, Kind Faren witnessed at first hand the ruination of the castle. The inner circle, the area closest to the throne room, was all but deserted, and had largely fallen into ruin. Towers had either crumbled, or leaned at such a precarious angle as if to suggest that their collapse was imminent, skeletons littered the houses, windows were boarded up, and the roads were cracked, damaged from disuse. Here, the King lingered for many years, lost, despite his initial view of the castle’s layout, until, by chance alone, he passed into the outer limits. In the houses, the towers of the castle’s outer margins, there were people at least, and soldiers - although not the soldiers of the King’s Republic, indeed, not one specific army, but different colours of armour, different standards, different armies, until the King wondered whether the various districts of the castle had in fact transformed into different countries, each unaware that it was part of the larger domain within the walls. In these, the sprawling provinces, with no sight of the walls and without a coherent path to the outside world, the King wandered aimlessly, entirely lost, his compass guiding him North, but North only seeming to unfold for all of eternity. His hair grew grey, his beard long, his bones creaked until he felt he could walk no further. Through the villages, the towns of the castle, he hauled his tired feet until, finally, and as chance and time had dictated, the gate from the castle to the world beyond materialised before his eyes. So secluded was this spot, that there were no houses, no people - and nature had reclaimed the land, vines creeping up the old metal gates, infiltrating the locks, the hinges. The King, for all his age, found that the ancient gates yielded easily, and he pushed them aside, expecting, finally, to set eyes upon his Kingdom, the lands which his ancestors had always ruled.

And yet all there was was the sea. No grand cities, no towering spires, no masses thronging against the world, simply the sea. Ages must have elapsed, the land consumed by the waters, and now, beneath his feet, the ocean was crashing against the cliffs, would soon begin to encroach upon the castle walls. Behind, was the degraded Castle, before him was the sea, and the Forgotten King, the Unknown King who none had recognised, stared out, out at the horizon, as the mast of a ship, drawing ever nearer, sliced cleanly through the ocean surface.