The port district of Stormvale smelled of rotten fish, salt, and stale beer, a combination that would have made any noble turn and flee. But four hooded figures walked the narrow streets without hesitation, dressed like common sailors in worn cloaks and muddy boots that concealed their true origin.
Kael pulled his hood lower, keeping his face in shadow as he guided the group through alleys that reeked of urine and despair. Beside him, Aldric walked with his hand resting casually on the hilt of his sword hidden beneath his cloak, but ready. Behind, Davos and Mika followed with less confident steps.
"Are you sure this will work?" Davos muttered, adjusting his own hood; the scar on his cheek gave him a tougher look than he probably felt.
"I feel ridiculous."
"That's the point," Kael replied without turning.
"No one expects nobles to dress like drunken sailors."
"What if they recognize us anyway?" Mika asked in a tense voice. He was thinner than Davos, quieter, and clearly out of his element.
"That's why Aldric is armed."
Aldric grunted something that could have been a laugh or disgust.
"I still don't understand why we didn't bring more guards. Three men..."
"Four," Kael corrected.
"Three and a half men," Aldric adjusted with a tone that suggested Kael didn't fully count. "To enter the territory of a corrupt merchant. It's stupid."
"It's necessary. We need discretion, not a military parade."
They turned a corner and there it was: "The Rusted Anchor," a two-story building that leaned slightly to one side like a perpetual drunk. A yellowish light filtered through the dirty windows, and the sound of voices and laughter spilled out the ajar door. Kael stopped a half-block away, observing.
Through a second-floor window, he saw what he was looking for: a figure dressed too well for this place. Ferris. Even from a distance, Kael could see the quality of his tunic and the gleam of the rings on his fingers when he gestured, speaking with someone out of sight.
'An entrepreneur,' Kael thought, frowning. 'Not a warrior. Not a street criminal. A businessman who could walk in noble circles if he wanted.'
'Then why is he here? Why is he cheating my family with crude tricks like stones in the grain?'
Something didn't add up. But he didn't have time to investigate deeper mysteries.
"He's upstairs," he said simply.
"Second floor. Probably his office."
"Office?" Davos repeated.
"In a dive bar?"
"The best dirty deals are made in the worst places," Kael replied, starting to walk toward the entrance.
"Let's go. And remember: let me talk first."
The interior of The Rusted Anchor was exactly what Kael expected: dark, noisy, full of sailors and mercenaries drinking as if the world were going to end tomorrow. The air was thick with cheap tobacco smoke and the sour smell of spilled beer that had dried into the wood for years. No one looked at them twice. Four more hooded figures in a sea of people who preferred not to be seen.
Kael navigated between the tables toward the stairs at the back. A large man with knife scars crossing his face stood there, blocking the access.
"Private," he growled, crossing arms the size of tree trunks.
"I need to see Ferris."
"Not without an appointment."
Kael stepped closer, lowering his voice.
"Tell him someone knows about the stones. In the grain."
The guard blinked. Just a second of confusion, but it was enough.
"Wait here."
He went up the stairs with heavy steps. Kael waited, aware of Aldric tense behind him and Davos and Mika exchanging nervous glances. Two minutes later, the guard came down.
"Upstairs. Second door on the left. But if you try anything..."
"We won't try anything," Kael lied.
The stairs creaked with every step. The second floor was quieter, with narrow hallways and closed doors that probably led to rooms where business no one wanted to see in daylight was conducted. The second door on the left was ajar. Kael pushed it open.
The office was surprisingly neat: solid wood desk, shelves with documents carefully filed, even a small window with curtains that weren't complete rags. Ferris was sitting behind the desk, with six men standing around the room, guards who tried to look professional but had that nervous air of poorly paid mercenaries.
Ferris himself was exactly what Kael had seen from outside: fifty-something, well-fed, dressed in a successful merchant's tunic. Rings on every finger. A face that had learned to smile while stabbing you in the back. He looked at him with curiosity, not recognition.
"And you are?" he asked with a voice that feigned authority.
Kael closed the door behind him. Aldric, Davos, and Mika entered, filling the small space. Ferris's guards immediately tensed. Instead of replying, Kael removed his cloak with a deliberate movement. The symbol of House Drayvar, a lightning bolt piercing a spear, was embroidered in silver on his black tunic, impossible to ignore even in the dim light.
The shock on Ferris's face was instant. His eyes widened and his jaw clenched. But he recovered quickly, faster than Kael expected.
"I see," he said slowly, composing his expression into something more neutral. Almost... amused.
"A Drayvar. What business does the young lord have with me?"
"Straight to the point," Kael replied, approaching the desk fearlessly.
"I want all the information. Everything you've been doing. The stones in the grain. The bribes to the inspectors. The names of your contacts."
The guards moved, reaching for their swords. Ferris raised a hand, stopping them. He was still smiling, but there was something cold in his eyes now.
"And I want to know," Kael continued, holding his gaze,
"who is really behind this."
Silence. Ferris leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers over his stomach.
"You're very young to play these games, boy."
"And you're too smart to feign ignorance. Speak."
One of the guards took a step forward, hand on the hilt of his sword.
"Boss? Do you want us to handle this?"
Ferris didn't reply immediately. He studied Kael with the eyes of a merchant calculating the value of a commodity.
"The young lord clearly doesn't understand his position," he finally said.
"Do you think you can walk in here and demand? Do you know how many 'nobles' have tried to intimidate me before?"
"The difference," Kael said in a voice that didn't tremble,
"is that I'm not intimidating. I'm offering a way out. Confess, give me names, and maybe you'll survive this."
Ferris laughed, a genuine sound that echoed in the small office.
"Or what? A nine-year-old boy will kill me?"
"No," Kael replied. "But he will."
He pointed to Aldric.
The three closest guards lunged. What followed lasted three seconds. Aldric moved not fast, but efficiently. His sword slipped from its sheath with a metallic hiss. The first guard didn't even have time to scream before the steel cut his throat. Hot, red, impossible-to-ignore blood arced out, splashing the wall.
The second guard managed to draw his sword. Useless. Aldric spun, his blade finding the exposed neck with the precision of a professional butcher. The third guard backed away, raising his hands. It didn't matter. Aldric's sword found him anyway, opening his throat with a cut that sounded wet and final.
Three bodies fell almost simultaneously. The other three guards froze, eyes wide and hands trembling on weapons they suddenly didn't want to draw. Ferris had backed against the wall, red stains splashing his expensive tunic. The silence was absolute except for the constant dripping of blood falling onto the wooden floor.
Kael hadn't blinked. He looked at the bodies with the same expression he would have used to look at documents on his father's desk.
"Now," he said in a perfectly calm voice, "do you want to reconsider?"
Ferris opened his mouth. He closed it. His eyes moved from the bodies to Kael and then to Aldric, who was wiping his sword with a rag as if this were a Tuesday routine. And then, surprisingly, Ferris smiled. It wasn't a smile of fear. It was the smile of someone who had just played his winning card.
"Very well, young man," he said, regaining his composure with a speed that would have been impressive if it weren't so unsettling.
"I see you've come prepared. Impressive, truly."
He stepped away from the wall, smoothing his tunic as if the bloodstains were just dust.
"But there's something," he continued, walking to his desk with measured steps, "that you don't understand about the world."
He opened a drawer. He took out a goblet. He poured himself wine with a hand that didn't tremble.
"Always," he said, taking a sip, "ALWAYS, there is someone stronger."
And as if he had been waiting for that exact moment, a side door Kael hadn't even noticed opened. The pressure changed immediately. It wasn't subtle. It was like the air before a storm, like the weight of the ocean pressing down from above. Everyone in the room felt that primal recognition of a predator entering the space.
The man who entered was tall, maybe thirty-five, with a face that had seen too many battles to still be called handsome. Scars crisscrossed his jaw. His hair was closely cropped. He wore simple but clean clothes, and the sword at his side was not ornamental; it was a working tool, used and maintained with professional care.
And his aura. Kael felt it like a physical blow. Master. First layer, perhaps, but definitely Master. Aldric took an immediate step forward, putting himself between Kael and the newcomer.
"Who the hell are you?" he growled, but there was a tension in his voice that hadn't been there even when he slit three men's throats.
The man didn't reply. He just laughed, a low, rough sound that was somehow more menacing than any verbal threat. Ferris, behind his desk, took another sip of wine.
"Allow me to introduce you to my insurance, young man. Did you think a businessman wouldn't have real protection?"
The man, Kael didn't know his name yet, drew his sword with an almost lazy movement.
"How many?" he asked in a voice that dragged the consonants as if speaking were boredom.
"Everyone but the boy," Ferris replied. "I want him alive. He has value."
"Mmm."
And he attacked. There was no warning. There was no dramatic posture. Just an explosion of movement that turned the space between him and Aldric into a blur. Aldric barely blocked. The impact resonated in his arms, sending him stumbling backward. His electric blue Aether bloomed around his sword, intensifying as he channeled everything he had.
It wasn't enough. The stranger pressed him with a combination that was half dance, half execution. Every blow pushed Aldric further back. Every block made the steel vibrate until Kael thought the sword would break.
The office exploded into violence. Ferris's desk, solid wood that had probably survived a decade, split in two when Aldric was slammed against it. Documents flew like snow. Shelves were torn from the wall by a sweep of energy that made even the surviving guards flee downstairs screaming. Davos and Mika had flattened themselves against the back wall, eyes wide with terror.
And Kael... Kael observed. Calculating. Processing.
'First-layer Master. Aldric is a Second-layer Knight. The difference is... it's like adult against child. No contest.'
Aldric blocked a high blow and counterattacked low. The stranger effortlessly dodged it, then kicked, not with Aether amplified, just a physical leg, and sent Aldric flying through what was left of the desk. Wood cracked. Aldric coughed blood.
"Broken rib," the stranger diagnosed in an almost conversational tone.
"Maybe two. Do you want to continue or have you made your point?"
Aldric pushed himself up, sword still in hand but trembling.
"Go... to hell..."
"Brave but a stupid reverend."
He raised his sword for the final blow. And Davos moved.
Kael saw it almost in slow motion. Davos coming out of his position against the wall. Davos running, not toward the exit, but forward. Davos interposing himself between the fallen Aldric and the Master with the raised sword.
"No," he said in a voice that trembled but held firm.
"No... you won't touch him."
The Master stopped, almost surprised.
"Little one," he said, lowering the sword marginally.
"This isn't your fight."
"I don't care," Davos raised his own sword, hands shaking, posture incorrect, but there he was. Standing.
"He's my friend."
"Davos," Kael said in the loudest voice he had used all night.
"Get back."
"No."
One word. Firm. Final. The scar on his cheek, earned in training, a symbol of his determination to be a knight someday, seemed darker in the dim light. And the Master... sighed.
"Brave," he repeated.
"But truly stupid."
Then he moved. Too fast. Faster than Davos, a twelve-year-old boy with three months of real training, could ever follow. His arm went through Davos's chest. Kael heard the wet, crunching, impossibly loud sound. And then the Master backed away, and in his hand was...
'No. No no no...'
Davos's heart. Literal. Still beating in the closed fist. Davos looked down. He looked at the hole in his chest. He looked at Kael. His lips moved, forming words that had no breath to escape. Then he fell. Like a puppet with severed strings, he collapsed into a pool of blood that was expanding too fast, too red, too real.
The Master dropped the heart with a wet sound Kael knew he would hear in nightmares. He wiped his hand on his trousers as if he had just killed an annoying mosquito.
Silence. Absolute. Mika was crying silent sobs that shook his entire body. Aldric tried to get up and failed, looking at Davos's body with an expression of total horror.
And Kael...
'I didn't calculate this.'
'It wasn't in the plan. Davos shouldn't have, couldn't have...'
'He's dead. My friend is dead. For following me. For trusting me.'
'When was the last time he called me dwarf? A week? Two? He stopped mocking because I started getting better. Because we were... we were friends.'
'And now he has a hole where his heart should be and it's MY FAULT...'
The Master turned to Kael, cleaning his sword.
"Your turn, little Drayvar."
He started walking. Measured steps. Unhurried. And Kael's mind, which had been paralyzed by the shock, the horror, the weight of what he had just witnessed, suddenly exploded into frantic activity.
'NO. No time for grief. No time for guilt. Survive FIRST. Process AFTER.'
'Think. THINK. Why is he here? First-layer Master. He could be in armies. He could be protecting real nobles. Why is he working for Ferris?'
'Ferris isn't worth this. He's not important enough. There has to be something else. A crack. Something I can...'
"Wait."
The word came out before he could fully think it. The Master stopped three meters away. He raised an eyebrow.
"'Wait'? Is that all you've got?"
"I have a proposition."
Silence. Then the Master laughed. A genuine laugh that sounded almost cheerful.
"Fine, brat. Speak. You've entertained me so far."
Kael took a deep, controlled breath, forcing his voice to remain steady.
"Work for me."
Absolute silence. Even Ferris put down his goblet.
"WHAT?" the merchant exploded.
The Master narrowed his eyes. Not angry. Curious.
"Explain yourself. Quickly."
"I already announced where I was going," Kael lied.
"If something happens to me, several knights will come. House Drayvar doesn't let the deaths of its blood go uninvestigated."
"And?"
"And you're too strong to be working for this shit."
He pointed to Ferris.
"You're a Master. First layer, if I read your aura correctly. You could have real position, respect, purpose. And instead you're here, in a dive bar in the port district, protecting a worm who cheats grain with tricks worthy of a street thief."
The Master didn't reply. But he didn't attack either. Kael pressed.
"Right now I have nothing to offer you except this: I'm a Drayvar. Blood of a Great House. I'm not the heir, I'm not even the favorite. But I'm not nobody either."
He walked a step forward, ignoring how his legs were trembling.
"Someday I'll take what's mine. I don't know when. I don't know how yet. But I will. And when I do, I'll need men who know how to do the hard things. Strong men. Loyal."
He held the Master's gaze: gray eyes against gray, nine-year-old boy against experienced assassin.
"Give me your strength now, and when my time comes, you'll earn much more than a corrupt merchant's coins. You'll earn purpose. Position. A place in something that matters."
Ferris exploded from his position, bleeding where a fragment of wood had cut him during the fight.
"GARETH!" he screamed, his voice breaking.
"KILL that damned brat and let's get out of here!" NOW!" I'll pay you double!" TRIPLE!"
Then Master Gareth turned to look at Ferris. And he smiled. It wasn't a friendly smile.
"Double?" he asked in a conversational tone.
"Of the shit salary you already pay me?"
"TRIPLE!" Name your price!"
"You know what, brat?" Gareth said, still looking at Ferris.
"You're right. This IS a shit job."
He walked toward the merchant. Ferris backed away, stumbling over debris.
"Gareth... we've worked together two years... we have history..."
"History," Gareth repeated.
"Yes. History of you treating me like hired muscle. History of shit jobs protecting shit business in shit places."
He raised his sword.
"Wait..."
One movement. Clean. Efficient. Ferris's head separated from his shoulders with a sound that was less dramatic than Kael expected, just a wet cut and then the body falling in one direction and the head rolling in another.
Gareth sheathed his sword and turned to Kael.
"Alright, brat. You win," his voice was flat, emotionless.
"But if you don't keep your promise, if this turns out to be wasted time, I'll kill you when you least expect it. Understood?"
"Understood," Kael replied, surprised his voice didn't tremble.
Gareth walked toward the side door he had entered through. He stopped on the threshold.
"What's your real name?" Kael asked.
The man looked over his shoulder.
"Gareth," he said simply. "We'll see each other again, young Drayvar. Don't make me regret this."
And he disappeared into the darkness, leaving only the sound of his footsteps descending hidden stairs.
Kael stood amidst the mess. Shattered office. Split desk. Cracked walls. Blood, so much blood soaking the wood, the documents, and the curtains. Four bodies. No, five. Three guards with slit throats. Ferris decapitated.
And Davos. Davos with a hole in his chest, eyes open staring at nothing, the scar on his cheek that would never heal because he would never grow old because he was DEAD.
Voices from downstairs. Shouts. Running footsteps.
"Call the guard!"
"There's blood on the stairs!"
"GUARDS!"
Kael looked at the semiconscious, bleeding Aldric. At the trembling, traumatized, useless Mika. At the dead Davos. And he thought, with a clarity that would have been funny if it weren't so horrible:
'Good. Perfect. Wonderful.'
'A destroyed office. Five corpses. My friend with his chest open. A knight almost dead. A witness in shock. And city guards arriving.'
'And how the hell do I explain THIS?'
He didn't have time to devise an answer before the door burst open. Six city guards entered with drawn swords, stopping dead when they saw the scene.
"What... what the hell..."
One immediately vomited. Another just stared, his face pale. The captain, an older man with scars that spoke of real experience, assessed the situation with eyes that had seen too much to be easily surprised.
"Secure the scene," he ordered in a firm voice.
"And someone bring the scribe. We're going to need detailed reports."
He turned to Kael, covered in blood spatters that weren't his, the Drayvar symbol clearly visible on his tunic, standing amongst corpses with a calm expression that was completely unnatural for the situation.
"Who the hell are you, child?"
Kael raised his chin, forcing himself to meet the captain's eyes without blinking.
"My name is Kael Drayvar," he said in a voice that didn't tremble, not yet.
"And I need to speak with whoever is in charge of the district. Immediately."
The captain looked around the carnage one more time. He looked at the Drayvar symbol. He looked at Kael.
"Oh," he said slowly.
"This is going to be a problem."
Kael didn't reply. He only looked at Davos one last time, at the boy who had stopped calling him dwarf, who had joked about his height, who had stood by him for three months of brutal training. The friend who had died for following him.
And he thought, with a coldness that frightened him:
'I'm sorry, Davos. But I don't have time to mourn yet.'
'Survive first.'
'Regret later.'
Outside, more guards were arriving. Voices shouting. The port district waking up to a violence that couldn't be ignored. And Kael Drayvar, nine years old, covered in blood, standing among the dead, awaited the consequences he knew would come.
But not regret.
Not yet.
Maybe never.