Before BLOOD MOON...
Riven was eight years old when his father first made him kill.
The training yard of the Shadowveil compound was a rectangle of packed earth surrounded by stone walls, scarred by a thousand sparring sessions and stained with decades of sweat and blood. Dawn light filtered through the mountain mist, painting everything in shades of gray and gold.
Kaelen Kain stood in the center of the yard, arms crossed, watching his son struggle with the wooden practice sword. The weapon was too heavy for Riven's small hands, too long for his reach, and his father had made it that way on purpose.
"Again," Kaelen said.
Riven lifted the sword. His arms trembled. He'd been doing this for two hours—raising the blade overhead, holding it steady, lowering it in a controlled arc. Over and over. His shoulders screamed. His fingers had gone numb an hour ago.
"I can't," he gasped. "Father, I can't—"
"Can't is how you die." Kaelen's voice was flat. Unyielding as stone. "Again."
Riven tried. The sword came up, wavered, started to fall. He caught it before it hit the ground, but barely.
Tears burned in his eyes. He blinked them away furiously. Shadowveils didn't cry. His father had taught him that before he could walk. Pain was fuel. Exhaustion was weakness leaving the body. Tears accomplished nothing.
"You're thinking about the sword," Kaelen said, stepping closer. "Stop thinking about the sword. Think about why you're holding it."
"To... to get stronger?"
"No." His father crouched down until they were eye level. Up close, Kaelen Kain was a map of scars—thin white lines across his cheeks, a puckered burn on his neck, the ghost of a blade that had nearly taken his left eye. Each one a story. Each one a lesson survived.
"You hold the sword because someday, someone will try to kill you. Someone will come in the dark with steel and magic and the absolute certainty that your life means nothing. And in that moment, strength won't save you. Technique won't save you." He tapped Riven's chest, right over his heart. "This will. The will to survive when surviving seems impossible. The refusal to quit even when your body begs you to. That's what makes a Shadowveil."
Riven swallowed hard. "What if I'm not strong enough?"
"Then you die. And I bury another child." Kaelen's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his eyes. Something that might have been pain if his father was capable of showing such things. "Your brother wasn't strong enough. Your sister before that. The clan expects losses. It's the price we pay for the life we chose."
Riven had heard the stories. Two siblings he'd never met, both dead before he was born. One to fever. One to a training accident that everyone pretended was an accident.
The Shadowveil way was brutal. Only the strongest survived to adulthood. Only the most skilled earned the clan's full trust.
"I'll be strong enough," Riven said, lifting the sword again. His arms shook worse than before, but he forced them steady through sheer stubbornness. "I'll be stronger than anyone."
For the first time that morning, Kaelen smiled. It wasn't a warm smile—his father didn't do warm—but it held something like approval.
"Good. Now hold that position until I tell you to stop."
Riven held it. Seconds became minutes. His muscles turned to fire, then to lead, then to nothing at all. The world narrowed to the sword, the burning, the absolute determination not to fail.
When he finally collapsed an hour later, his father caught him before he hit the ground.
"You lasted longer than yesterday," Kaelen said, carrying him toward the compound's main hall. "Tomorrow you'll last longer still. That's how we build warriors, Riven. One impossible task at a time."
**----**
The rabbit was brown and white, with eyes like polished glass and a nose that twitched with nervous energy.
Riven held it in both hands, feeling its heartbeat flutter against his palms like a trapped bird. It was warm. Soft. Alive in a way that made his chest tight.
"Kill it," his father said.
They stood in a stone room beneath the compound—cold and windowless, lit by a single candle that threw dancing shadows across walls etched with ancient symbols. This was the blood-room, where the Shadowveil performed their darker rituals. Where children learned that mercy was a luxury their profession couldn't afford.
Riven was nine years old. He'd trained for a year since the sword lessons began, had grown faster and stronger and more skilled. Had proven himself worthy of the next lesson.
"I don't understand," he said quietly. "It's just a rabbit."
"Nothing is 'just' anything." Kaelen placed a knife on the stone altar between them. Short blade. Sharp enough to split hairs. "Everything lives. Everything dies. The only question is whether death has purpose."
"What purpose does killing a rabbit serve?"
"Teaching you that killing is easy. That the hard part isn't the act—it's living with it after." His father's scarred hands gestured to the knife. "Most people never cross this line. They eat meat but let others do the slaughter. They benefit from violence but keep their hands clean. The Shadowveil don't have that luxury. We are the violence. We are the ones who do what others won't."
Riven looked down at the rabbit. It had stopped struggling, seemed almost calm in his grip. Trusting, in the way prey animals sometimes did when they'd given up hope of escape.
"If I don't do this?" he asked.
"Then you're not ready for what comes next. And you never will be." Kaelen's voice softened, just slightly. "I know this seems cruel, Riven. Perhaps it is. But the world is crueler. The world will demand worse from you, and it won't give you time to prepare. Better you learn now, in safety, what your limits are."
Riven picked up the knife. The rabbit's heartbeat continued its frantic rhythm against his palm.
He thought about his siblings he'd never met. The ones who weren't strong enough.
Wondered if they'd stood in this same room, faced this same test.
Wondered if they'd failed because they were weak, or because they were kind.
The knife was cold in his hand. The rabbit was warm.
Riven made his choice.
The blade moved quickly. Cleanly. The rabbit jerked once, then went still. Blood—hot and darker than he expected—ran over his fingers, dripped onto the altar stone.
His father said nothing. Just watched.
Riven set the body down carefully, as if gentleness after death could somehow balance the violence of the act. His hands were shaking. The room felt too small, too cold, the walls pressing in.
"How do you feel?" Kaelen asked.
"Sick."
"Good. That means you're still human." His father placed a hand on Riven's shoulder—a rare gesture of physical comfort. "The day killing stops bothering you is the day you've lost yourself. Remember that. No matter how skilled you become, no matter how many lives you take, if you can't feel the weight of it, you've become a monster."
"But we kill people," Riven said. "The clan. We're assassins. We kill for money."
"We do. And we carry that weight every day." Kaelen guided him to a basin of water in the corner, helped him wash the blood away. "But there's a difference between killing because you must and killing because you can. Between taking a life for purpose and taking it for pleasure. The Shadowveil walk a narrow edge, Riven. On one side is duty. On the other is damnation. Your entire life will be spent trying not to fall."
Riven watched the water turn pink, then red, then clear as the blood washed away. His hands were clean again. But he could still feel the warmth of the rabbit, the flutter of its heartbeat.
He would feel it for the rest of his life.
"I don't want to be a monster," he said quietly.
"Then don't be." His father's reflection appeared in the water beside his own. Two faces, one scarred by decades, one still unmarked by the world. "The choice is always yours, Riven. No one can make it for you. Not me. Not the clan. Just remember: monsters don't worry about being monsters. The fact that you're afraid of it means you're still fighting."
They left the blood-room together. Behind them, the candle guttered and died, leaving the rabbit's body in darkness.
Six months later, Riven's little sister was born.
He held Lyra for the first time in the compound's birthing room, his mother weak but smiling, his father watching with something that might have been pride.
She was tiny. Impossibly fragile. Her fingers curled around his thumb and held on with surprising strength.
"She's perfect," his mother whispered. "What do you think, Riven? Do you like your sister?"
Riven couldn't speak. Could barely breathe. This small, helpless thing was his to protect. His responsibility.
He thought about the rabbit. About the blood on his hands. About his father's words: The choice is always yours.
"I'll keep her safe," he said. A promise. An oath. "No matter what happens. I'll protect her."
His mother smiled. His father nodded approval.
And in the corner of the room, shadows gathered thick and dark, as if the future itself was listening.
Two years later, the blood moon would rise.
Two years later, Riven would break his promise.
But in that moment, holding his sister while she slept, he believed absolutely that he could keep her from all harm. That his training, his strength, his father's lessons would be enough.
He believed he could save her.
The world would teach him otherwise.