The rain was not so much falling in Vireholm as it was stabbing. Each drop hit the steel rooftops like daggers, reverberating through the alleyways the city's lost souls crawled through. Kael Virex crouched beneath an old rusted vent, winded and hyper-focused on the mansion across the street. House Varnel. One of the old bloods. Rich in magic, richer in secrets. Kael had waited three nights for this exact moment. The guards wore enchanted armor—visors pulsing a faint blue light. Their rifles were heirlooms—blessed with runes, operated by tech. But there was a pattern, with very identifiable gaps, and Kael picked up on their arrogance.
He dissipated from the shadows like billowing smoke, hitting the wet stones with silent boots. His cloak flickered for a moment as it adjusted to the ambient light—a "gift" from the black market. Of course, it was stolen.
He reached the side gate. It was locked by a biometric rune. While he didn't possess the considered bloodline to activate it, he possessed something better: an override chip, embedded in the hilt of a dagger. He held it to the rune and pressed it. It sparked, popped, and then blinked green.
That was too easy.
Too easy.
Inside, the mansion was a temple of opulence. Floors of marble with veins of gold. Floating chandeliers splashing mana everywhere. Portraits of smug nobles who had never gone hungry in their lives. Kael's fingers itched towards his blade. He wasn't here to enjoy. Room 3B. Second Floor. The ledger. That book held names—murdered children, erased lives. His name had to be in it. He was sure of it. And if it wasn't, he'd carve it in himself. He moved like a whisper, bypassing wards with tech and instinct. The hall was empty. The door to 3B creaked open. Inside: shelves of tomes, scrolls, and a lone desk. On it, the ledger. Kael walked closer, heart pounding. He flipped the pages—each turn a fresh wound. And then he found it.
Subject 47: K.V. — Status: Discarded. No potential. No magic. No value.
His hands quaked. Not fear; anger.
They'd marked him like trash. A failed item. A blunder.
He didn't hear the footsteps until it was too late.
"Step away from the desk," said a voice behind him. Cold. Female. Familiar.
Kael turned slowly. She was dressed in assassin's black, and her eyes were not in the slight anything else but ice. Her blade was out.
"You should not be here," she said.
Kael smiled, bitter and sharp. "You should not be hung out here."
And then he lunged
Rain pounded the rooftop as Kael collided with the unknown assassin in a whirl of steel and shadow. Their blades met with a scream that echoed and rang through the vaulted ceiling of the library. She moved like a predator; every strike lethal, every parry a question he barely answered.
He dodged a slash to his throat that grazed his skin, the ambient wind tilting his neck sideways. In that moment, everything faded into the hiss of metal and the tempo of his heart. He flicked his wrist and nicked her arm--tiny bits of mana danced at the edge of his blade, a trick he had swiped from a dying mage in a filthy district. She drew back, surprised.
"Not too horrible for garbage," she hissed, circling him. The hem of her cloak opened and he saw glowing runes flickering metallic frosty colors. He felt the air cool around him--she was not a regular guard.
Kael feinted left and lunged right, pushing her backward toward the window. The glass cracked beneath her feet, and frost started to spiderweb outward upon the glass. A pull-kick sent her sprawling through the shattered frame. She landed on the rooftop, breathing hard, her cloak swirling away over the spiked parapets.
He seized the ledger and dashed after her, vaulting up to the ledge without losing a beat. Below him, the Varnel guards were rushing in—heavy boots pounding on marble. Kael pressed hard against the stone wall, the tech in his cloak muffling sound just enough.
"I'll finish this," she called from above, her voice soft but steady.
Kael said nothing. He slipped into a narrow alley, the ledger pressed hard against his chest. Rain plastered his hair to his forehead; the edges of the ledger pages were wet through, but he did not slow his pace. For every second he stayed, he could pay for the additional line on his own obituary.
The lower districts of Vireholm were an intricate maze of neon and the crumbling stone of poor construction. Holographic salesmen marketed glowing cure-healing potions for magically induced ailments; geese flocked the alleyways preposterously bioengineered in plume. Kael wove through that clutter, leaping broken carts and sliding under barred gates.
He felt the woman trailing like a shadow; she watched and walked alongside him by mere presence. He ducked into a dead-end alleyway, hermetically pressed his back against a damp brick wall and spilled the ledger onto his lap by torchlight he conjured with his thumb.
Names. A million of them. Names Of children abducted, experimented on, and one more dumped when he saw their need to be dumped.- and then—his mark, his own entry K.V. marked "disposable."
A scraping sound of claws on stone grabbed his attention movement up—it was Celeste Varnel, perched against the ledge of the rooftop and her pale figure did little to shield her glowing silver eyes from the shadows of night.
"Why are you here, Forsaken One?" she asked. The softness of her voice carried an almost seductive cadence now. "Revenge is a fickle thing."
Kael stood with the ledger cradled against him as if it were a shield in front of him. "Try explaining that to the empty mattress I was waking up on for years."
She regarded him, rain running down her face like the silent tears that refused to spill. Then, apparently shifting her weight towards the world of reality, she vanished into a swirl of frost and shadow.
When the dawn broke pink over the spires of Vireholm, Kael found himself again in his hideout—a hollowed-out service tunnel beneath Old Town. He placed the ledger on a dented workbench, its lonesome pages curling. He scrawled his initials in the margin and once again put ink to his pain.
He stood staring into the shaft of the sunrise pouring through a brocken grate, arms folded. Above, the city pulsed with life. Below, he connected the dots on his plot. The world had marked him forsaken.
But soon enough, the world would learn his name.