Prologue
Months had passed since Lelouch vi Britannia and his sister Nunnally were ripped from the palace—hostages dressed in royal silk, bartered away to silence Japan. But that was only the beginning.
The real blow came later.
The attack was swift. Silent. Surgical. No demands. No warnings. Just fire and death. When the flames finally died, one of the Emperor's lesser-known sons was dragged from the wreckage—burned, broken, breathing smoke.
Fourteen years old. A forgotten name in a long imperial ledger.
Now he lay in a hospital chamber, swaddled in bandages, tethered to machines. His lungs were scorched. A mask fed him breath by the second. His siblings came and went, leaving sympathy like perfume—fragrant, empty, and quick to fade. His mother might have come too, but she'd been erased long before the fire.
In the silence, something grew.
Not sorrow.
Something colder.
Purpose.
He healed slowly. Painfully. But not quietly. One night, he walked into his private bathroom, the soft hiss of his respirator the only sound. Moonlight caught his reflection in the window—a ghost of a prince, wrapped in white.
He didn't flinch.
He punched.
The glass shattered, and for a moment, everything felt honest.
Back in his room, something waited. A book—left on the table. Not a gift. Not listed in hospital records. Bound in black leather. No title on the cover.
He opened it.
Inside: the history of a shadow. The League of Assassins.
They had no nations. No masters. Just purpose. Purity through death. Cities were corrected. Empires brought low. And above it all, one name: Ra's al Ghul—the Demon's Head. Immortal. Calculated. Patient. A man who didn't beg history to change… he carved it.
The boy read long into the night. Again. And again.
He understood.
He didn't need a throne.
He needed time. Precision. Discipline. And when the world forgot him, he would rise from the ashes—not as a prince.
As something else.
Under the mask, he smiled.