The rain was no longer a drizzle; it was a rhythmic, pounding weight that turned the world into a landscape of grey ink and jagged shadow. On the western edge of the Starfall encampment, the palisade stood as a raw, wooden tooth against the dark. The torches here had long since been extinguished by the deluge, leaving the perimeter in a blind, suffocating gloom.
Alaric moved through the mud with a silence that belied his physical presence. He wore a simple dark hauberk over his travel leathers, the metal muted with oil to prevent any telltale glint. In his right hand, he carried a castle-forged longsword—heavy, reliable, and devoid of the enchantments that usually announced a prince's arrival.
He did not need magic tonight. He had the weight of his own reinforced physiology, a gift of the system and a body that had been pushed to its absolute limits since he was old enough to hold a wooden training blade.
He felt them before he saw them. A shift in the rhythm of the rain, the wet squelch of a boot finding a soft patch of earth where no sentry should be. Alaric pressed his back against the rough cedar of the palisade, his breathing shallow and controlled.
Five men emerged from the treeline. They moved with a predatory coordination, draped in heavy, sodden cloaks meant to mask their silhouettes. These were not common brigands; they were the Ebon Hand's specialized "Wrecker" teams—men who had traded their noble titles for the coin of the underworld. Each carried a heavy-cranked arbalest, the bolts tipped with a dull, oily sheen that suggested a paralytic toxin.
"The Prince's solar is north by the tower base," one whispered, his voice barely audible over the storm. "Kill the guards. If the boy wakes, pin him to the bed. We make it look like a botched robbery."
Alaric stepped out of the shadow of the palisade.
"Robbery is a low ambition for men of your standing," he said, his voice cold and resonant, cutting through the drumming rain like a blade.
The assassins froze. The lead man, a scarred veteran with the cold eyes of a butcher, didn't hesitate. He leveled his arbalest and fired.
The bolt hissed through the air, a blur of steel intended for Alaric's throat. Most men, even trained knights, would have been struck. But Alaric's perception was a honed instrument. To him, the bolt moved through the rain with the lethargy of a swimming fish. He didn't dodge; he caught the projectile's path with the flat of his blade, a sharp clack of metal sending the bolt spinning harmlessly into the mud.
Before the lead assassin could even reach for his secondary dagger, Alaric was upon them.
His Strength—a monstrous 22 that defied his youthful frame—uncoiled with the violence of a spring-trap. He didn't just strike; he collided. His shoulder caught the lead man in the chest, the impact sounding like a tree trunk snapping. The assassin was launched backward five feet, his ribs caving in instantly as he hit the timber wall.
The remaining four dropped their arbalests and drew short, wicked gladii. They were professional, surrounding him in a practiced semi-circle, their movements synchronized to overwhelm a single target.
"He's just a boy!" the man to the left snarled, lunging with a low thrust.
Alaric didn't parry. He grabbed the man's wrist. The sound of bones grinding against one another was audible even over the thunder. With a grunt of effort, Alaric swung the assassin like a living flail, his immense strength turning the man's weight into a weapon. The assassin's body slammed into two of his comrades, sending them sprawling into the muck in a tangle of limbs and steel.
The final attacker, seeing his opening, went for a high decapitating strike. Alaric dropped low, his center of gravity unshakeable. He drove his fist into the man's stomach—a punch backed by the full weight of his reinforced musculature. The man didn't just fall; he doubled over, his feet leaving the ground as the air was punched out of him in a violent spray of bile and rain.
Alaric stood in the center of the mud, his sword still held low, his breath coming in slow, even cycles. Three men lay unconscious or broken in the slush; the fourth was struggling to rise, his arm dangling at an unnatural angle. The fifth—the leader—was coughing blood against the palisade.
"Who holds your leash?" Alaric asked, stepping toward the leader. The rain washed the blood from his blade, the silver-gold of his hair plastered to his forehead.
The leader looked up, his eyes wide with a terror that had nothing to do with the storm. He wasn't looking at a prince. He was looking at a predator that had been disguised as a child.
"The... the House of Valerius," the man wheezed, his voice bubbling. "They said... they said you were a threat to the trade. That the Tower... the Tower had to fall."
"The Tower is stone," Alaric said, his voice devoid of pity. "Stone can be rebuilt. But your house... your house is made of people. And people can be erased."
Alaric didn't kill them. He didn't need to. The terror in their eyes would serve his purpose better than a corpse. He looked toward the riverbank, where the third team had likely been watching. In the distance, he saw the faint, frantic movement of men retreating into the woods. They had seen enough.
He turned his back on the broken men and looked up at the Wizard's Tower. Somewhere in the lower levels, Valeraine was finishing her own grim work. By dawn, the order would be baptized in the blood of its first enemies.
He began the long walk back toward the center of the camp, the mud clinging to his boots. He had proven his strength to the shadows; tomorrow, he would prove his legitimacy to the light.