Six years ago.
The rain beat incessantly against the estate's windows, but I dared not move. Not in front of Her. I was in the darkest corner of the room, my natural habitat, yet I felt her gaze upon me even though her back was turned. Lady Elisene, the only woman who had ever managed to bring me to my knees. The only one for whom I had betrayed the Guild and sworn eternal loyalty.
She leaned over the crib. Inside were two children. To the left slept Elen, barely two years old, already strong and healthy like a little Stahl. To the right was him. Luthian. One year of life.
"We will depart before dawn, Karter," She said. Her voice was steady, regal, but I, who knew every vibration of pain, heard the crack. "Elen will come with me to the Capital. It is necessary for her."
I stepped out of the shadows, removing my hood. I was flooded by that scent of apples I adored so much about her. "My Lady... and Lord Vorgath? And the boy? Are you leaving him here alone?"
She stroked little Luthian's cheek. "He must stay. It is safer here, in the shadow of the estate, than at the royal court with me. Do not worry about Vorgath: he will do nothing but strip him of his nobility." She turned to me. Strip him of his nobility?
Her eyes shone with that ghostly violet light, typical of her magic against which I had no hope. Space-Time Magic. "Luthian is normal. A common person without mana."
My eyes widened. "At one year old? Impossible to say with certainty. Channels form around age three... Don't tell me you pushed yourself beyond your powe—" She interrupted me with a weak gesture of her hand, bringing a handkerchief to her lips.
"The future is written, if you know from which angle to look at time," she whispered, her voice cracked with fatigue. "No mana means no Way of Magic. And, even more unforgivable for an Eisenhart, no Way of Aura. Without internal mana, he will never be able to learn the Vajra technique, nor reinforce his body with the Mantle."
Her gaze hardened, returning to me. "For Vorgath and the other branch of the Kristall Eisenharts, a family noble who cannot use Vajra or cast Saint-rank spells is just... If I take him to court, he will be humiliated and then discarded. But if he stays here..." "If he stays here, he will just be a 'useless' country boy," I concluded, finally understanding her plan. "He will be alive," she retorted fiercely. "And perhaps, far from Emperor Azera's eyes and the family's expectations, he might find a different path..."
Suddenly, She swayed. She brought a hand to her chest, her breathing becoming short, labored. "My Lady!" I sprang forward, but a shadow was faster than me. I recognized her immediately. It was Hilda. "Lady Elisene, you must not exert yourself so much, you must rest your power a little..." She caught her breath. "...it consumes too much mana, you risk too much."
She shook her head, pale. "Uh, uh. It's fine like this, Hilda." "Time..." she whispered, clinging to the warrior-maid's arm. "Little time remains before..." She didn't finish the sentence. There was no need. Hilda immediately escorted her toward the armchair. When she pulled it away, I noticed a small stain of blood on the handkerchief.
She straightened up with difficulty, looking me in the eyes with an intensity that burned my soul. "Karter. I order you to protect him. Hide him. Make him invisible to everyone's eyes. You are good at this." She looked at me with a desperate air but at the same time tried to hide behind a trembling smile to reassure me. My heart pounded in my chest, a dull thud like drumbeats.
"I will do everything possible, my Lady," I swore, bowing my head. "Even if it is the last thing I do. The boy will live." She smiled again, a sad smile, and returned to look at the crib. "My little sun." Those words broke me. They reminded me of my mother, long ago.
"Hilda, from tomorrow you will be his nanny," she continued as she caressed Luthian's face. "I will leave you further instructions in a letter." "Yes, Lady Elisene!" the woman replied with military firmness.
It was in that moment that I noticed something watching that child. Little Luthian opened his eyes. He didn't cry. He didn't seek his mother or anything else. He turned his head and planted his eyes into mine. A cold shiver ran down my spine, the same one I felt before an assassination. That was not the gaze of a one-year-old child. There was not the milky emptiness of infancy. There was calculation. There was analysis. He was studying me. What is this child? I thought. How is it possible that he manages to disturb me to such a point?
"Goodbye, my little one," She whispered, her voice broken. "L-leave... pl-please—" She began to weep. "Yes!" Hilda and I replied in unison. "We will be right outside, my Lady." We exchanged a glance, the maid and I, and left the room, leaving a mother to her final farewell.
Present.
The heavy sound of the great door closing brought me back to reality. Luthian had just left. I passed a hand over my rough face. I could stop pretending at least here. The bent and limping posture of the old drunkard stable hand vanished. I straightened my back. I had become so accustomed to pretending that returning to normality felt unnatural. My breathing became silent, imperceptible, as I had always trained myself to do.
Had I failed? Or had I just interpreted the order in my own way? "Protect him," She had said. For seven years I had thought that protecting him meant keeping him low, in the dust. Making him clean horse shit to divert others' eyes from him. But that boy... that damned boy had his mother's same eyes. And the same stubbornness.
I loved Elisene so much that I betrayed all my ideals and everything else, even going against Lord Vorgath. I knew it was a one-sided love, but I chose this path all the same. I thought of the last letter she had sent me. I didn't know how to find the words. But now I couldn't stop the flooding river. So, instead of stopping it, I had decided to teach him to swim, at least to prepare him for the turbulence. "Forgive me, my Lady," I murmured to the wind. "Perhaps I could find the courage to respon—"
"Talking to yourself, old man?"
The deep voice arrived from the center of the courtyard. I hadn't realized I had gotten so close to the training field. Or perhaps, something had led me there. The predator always smells the other predator. The Captain stood still in the middle of the beaten earth, a statue of muscle and scars. He had just sent his recruits toward the hell of the Glamler Woods and was now enjoying the silence.
I approached, dragging my leg again out of habit, holding the manure-stained shovel like a walking stick. "The courtyard is empty, Captain," I croaked, putting the drunkard voice back on. "Someone has to clean the shit your recruits leave behind."
Zoltan didn't turn. He remained motionless with arms crossed, looking at the closed gate. "You didn't try to stop him, Kael." "And you sent him to the slaughterhouse, Zoltan," I shot back. My voice lost every trace of senility to become colder and colder, almost by instinct. "You know well that the Glamler Woods are not suitable for them, and especially not for him. Not yet. You put him in Theo's team on purpose. Did you want to see him crumble?"
"I don't care about these things, old man. I want to see something else in him, and if he survives... well, at least he proves he's worth something," he replied, turning slowly. "You seem too worried. For a simple stable hand who hates headaches, you care a lot about that scrap." "He's just a good worker. Rare these days." Zoltan gave a dangerous smile, that sneer arched so high that it had earned him his old nickname. "Don't lie to me, old man. We've known each other too long."
In that moment, the wind changed. I could sense every single movement within a fifty-meter radius. I felt my muscles intoxicated with adrenaline. I poured mana entirely into every muscle fiber. I had wanted to stretch a bit for some time. I slipped into the shadow cast by Zoltan's massive body. No sound of footsteps. No rustle of clothes. The "Emperor's Shadow Step." The technique that had made me the head of the Guild. I concealed my presence; in this state, I am always invisible for a few seconds. Covered by a magic barrier. I arrived at his back with an ease that not even someone at Saint Rank or Sword King could counter. I raised the shovel. Not as a farming tool, but as a war axe, aiming for the base of his neck. "You talk too much, Mastiff," I whispered behind him.
I brought the blow down. SLAM!
The air on the opposite side exploded. The shovel stopped a millimeter from Zoltan's skin. He hadn't blocked it with a sword. He had stopped it with two fingers, raised lazily over his shoulder, wrapped in a crimson aura dense as blood. The impact generated a shockwave that kicked up the courtyard dust and made the horses in the distant stables whinny in terror.
We remained like that for a second. My shovel against his fingers. The pure physical strength of an assassin against the Vajra of a Sword King inches away from being an Emperor. That clash confirmed it for me. He was strong. Probably in a direct clash with equal weapons he could prevail. The Vajra... I knew it was a fearsome technique that granted boundless strength to the user, but I didn't think this much.
"I see you've lost your hair, but not your habits," Zoltan said, without turning, his voice calm but amused. "You're slow, Karter. Ten years ago you would have cut off at least an ear." Shaking off a piece of shit stuck to his neck. "You like shit that much?"
I withdrew the shovel and leaped backward, landing in a shadowed area. "And you've become lazy," I replied laughing, leaning on the tool as if nothing had happened. "You used mana against a crippled old man armed with a shovel. How shameful." Zoltan turned, massaging his fingers. The crimson aura vanished. "That 'cripple' was The Weaver, the man who killed three Lords of the Southern Empire in one night with a spoon. Don't fuck with me."
We exchanged a look. There was respect. The respect between two monsters who have survived long enough to grow old and hide from the world.
"You let him leave," Zoltan said, returning to seriousness. "You could have stopped him. With your skills, you could have given him a fever, broken his leg in his sleep, anything to keep him safe, if you cared so much."
"There is something coming, Zoltan," I said, curving my back. It was time to return to the "normality" I knew. "Killer instinct." I tried to act tough. I wanted to diffuse the situation a bit. "Keeping him under a glass bell won't be enough anymore. That boy will have to look death in the face and smell blood, not just that of stable shit or the sweat of fake training."
Zoltan looked toward the north, toward the mountains bordering the wild lands. His smile vanished, replaced by a grim concern. "You have a nose for it, old man," he murmured. "My spies say the Royal Army is moving in great secrecy thanks to the magic of the 'Seer Saint.' It is not a drill."
My eyes widened. I knew who she was. I didn't have to show anything. "Where?" "Toward the Northern ports." I heard a brief pause that made me shudder. We were no longer talking about small things. "And toward the archipelago that connects us to the Demon Continent; it seems the demons are in turmoil over the awakening of their Great Empress of Tyranny, Belatofe."
The Demon Continent. Then the legendary demon queen. Too much important information to process at once. I gripped the shovel handle until I heard the wood creak. "Impossible! The war ended centuries ago! Besides, aren't the demons the ones who allied with us?"
Peace was ending. I knew my words were just something the wind carried away easily. If war broke out... not even the promise made to Her could save Luthian. I had been right to disobey. I had been right to prepare him in the shadows.
Zoltan didn't answer me. He was there with crossed arms looking at the horizon. "I'm going back to my horses," I said, turning on my heel. "You see to it not to get them all killed out there, Captain. Especially him." "Fate chooses for him," replied the Mastiff.
But we both sensed that, in our world, something bigger than us was coming to break down the doors.