Infrequent was the sleep of the city of Vireholm. Its towers stabbed into the clouds like obsidian fangs, humming with neon veins and ancient spells. Beneath that shining surface periodically would seep the world of corruption, domination by the powers of blood, and left broken by ghosts.
And he was of them.
The man lacked a name. Not anymore. Names were for cherished ones, for those remembered. For he had been neither. Born from the shadows, being raised in silence, discarded like a failed experiment. His parents had dissolved from his very knowledge before he could utter their names; and, likewise, the world had followed suit with its back turned, gates locked, marking him unworthy.
Yet, he remembered everything.
Cold nights in the gutter with the rain tasting of rust and stars mocking him behind the veil of smog. The nobles who spat in their faces. The guards who crushed under their boots-knees him for breathing too loud. The orphanage that was breeding and selling children as livestock. The one who looked at him with a smile while they were being robbed of everything.
He had no magic, no lineage, no alliances; just amassed rage and a blade.
Assassins were ghosts of justice in Vireholm. They are silent whispers unspoken names feared. He would be one, not for money, not for glory, but for revenge. Every cut would be a memory; every kill, a reckoning.
He would climb the tower of power, brick by bloody brick, until the world that abandoned him knelt in apology--or burned in silent.
They called him useless and soon would call him something else.
Death.