I rarely dream.
Sleep, to me, has always been a shallow thing. A necessary pause. A moment where the body resets while the mind remains half-alert, listening for danger even in darkness. That is how I was trained.
So when I dream, I know something is wrong.
The air in the dream is cold. Stone-cold. The kind that seeps into bone and refuses to leave.
I am kneeling.
Small again.
My knees ache, pressed against the floor of the Hall of Discipline. The ceiling above is high, arching into shadow, carved with symbols meant to remind us of what we were. Or rather, what we were not.
Human.
There are others beside me. Dozens. Children in rows, all dressed the same, all silent. Silence was not requested. It was expected. Sound was proof of failure.
A blade is placed in front of me.
It is too heavy for my hands at this age, but I do not flinch. Flinching is recorded. Weakness is remembered.
I pick it up.
Blood runs down my fingers immediately. I do not loosen my grip.
The instructor walks past us slowly. His footsteps echo, measured, patient. He smells faintly of iron and incense.
"A blade does not cry," he says.
No one does.
We rise together. We strike together. Wooden targets splinter under the weight of our blows. My arms tremble, but my stance is perfect. I memorized it faster than the others. Adjusted faster. Learned faster.
That was when they first noticed me.
The dream shifts.
Years pass like pages turning too quickly.
My body grows lean, honed, scarred. I outrun everyone. Outlast everyone. When they pair us in sparring, they stop matching me with children my age. Then they stop matching me at all.
I fight instructors instead.
I win.
They do not praise me. Praise creates expectation. Expectation creates ego.
Instead, they give me harder missions.
The first kill is messy.
The tenth is efficient.
The hundredth feels no different than breathing.
By the time I am sixteen, my name is no longer spoken aloud. It becomes a title, whispered among the lower ranks. The Shadow Fang. The Black Silence. The Clan's Perfect Blade.
I am sent where others fail.
Kings protected by entire battalions. Mages sealed behind layered barriers. Warlords who survived poison, curses, even dragonfire.
I kill them all.
Sometimes I walk through armies without being seen. Sometimes I let them see me, just to watch fear slow their reactions before I strike.
No one ever touches me.
No one ever survives an encounter.
The clan elders say I am the strongest assassin they have ever produced.
They say if the clan were a body, I would be its heart.
I believe them.
Because nothing has ever contradicted it.
Until Vaelor.
The memory sharpens, vivid and unwelcome.
I remember the contract. The reward was absurd. The warnings contradictory. No known guards. No known allies. No confirmed sightings of weakness.
Just one instruction.
Do not engage directly.
I ignore it.
I always do.
I find him alone in his castle. Sitting as if the world has never opposed him. As if blood has never touched his hands. As if he does not rule half the world by fear alone.
My blade reaches his throat.
Perfect angle. Perfect timing. Perfect kill.
And yet.
He speaks.
Calm. Almost bored.
I realize then that he has known I was there since the moment I entered the castle.
That realization is the first time fear touches me.
Not the sharp kind.
The quiet kind.
The kind that sinks in slowly and refuses to leave.
I should have died that night.
I know that now.
Not because he was stronger.
But because strength was irrelevant.
He existed on a different scale entirely.
The dream fractures.
Pain explodes. My arm tears away. Blood. Heat. A dragon's roar that shakes the sky itself.
Then nothing.
I wake.
My body moves before my thoughts catch up. I am already standing, already armed, already scanning my surroundings.
The training grounds are empty.
Dawn has not fully arrived. The sky is pale gray, stretched thin like fabric about to tear. The castle looms behind me, silent, eternal, unchanged by time or war.
I exhale slowly.
It was just a dream.
I begin training.
Each movement is familiar. Comforting. Strike. Step. Turn. Guard. My body remembers what my mind tries to forget.
I am the strongest assassin.
I repeat it to myself like a mantra.
I have killed kings. Slaughtered generals. Outmatched monsters that entire orders feared.
And yet my blade feels heavy.
My rhythm falters.
Only slightly.
Enough.
I push harder.
The air snaps under my strikes. Dust lifts from the ground. My muscles burn, but I welcome it. Pain is clarity.
Still, my thoughts betray me.
I think of how Vaelor killed a dragon with one strike.
Not a desperate blow.
Not a calculated risk.
A casual motion.
I think of how he healed my arm without even looking at me.
As if restoring what was broken was no more difficult than brushing dust from his sleeve.
I am the strongest assassin.
And I am nothing compared to him.
That realization should have crushed me.
Instead, it unsettles me in a different way.
Because he does not treat me like nothing.
I feel it before I see him.
That presence.
Not oppressive. Not hostile.
Heavy.
A shadow falling where it should not exist.
I do not turn.
A hand rests briefly on my head.
Light.
Almost gentle.
The contact is over before my body can react, yet warmth spreads through me in a way I do not understand.
My heart stutters.
Not fear.
Not obedience.
Something unfamiliar.
When the weight disappears, I continue training.
My movements are sharper now. Cleaner. But my thoughts no longer return to where they began.
For the first time since I was taken into the clan, since I was shaped into something deadly and empty, I feel it clearly.
I was forged to be a blade.
But standing here, beneath a sky that is slowly brightening, watched by someone who could erase me without effort yet chooses not to, I realize something I was never taught to prepare for.
A blade does not question its purpose.
I do.
And that thought follows me long after the sun fully rises, quiet and persistent, promising that this is only the beginning.