Chapter 1: The Child of Ashes
The village burned.
Flames swallowed the night like some vast beast unleashed from the bowels of the earth. Thatched roofs collapsed inward, sparks roaring into the black sky as timbers groaned and splintered. Smoke hung heavy, turning stars into dim smudges, choking the lungs of the dying who crawled and screamed in the dirt.
The raiders had come at dusk. They were men of the Iron Fang — mercenaries without loyalty, wolves in rusted armor who carved their pay from weak towns and forgotten hamlets. They rode in with the setting sun at their backs, thirty strong, their laughter mingling with the shrieks of their horses as they charged through barley fields turned gold by the last light of day.
There had been no warning. The village had no walls, no watchmen, no soldiers. Only farmers, their wives, and their children all living together peacefully only trying to survive and train their offspring with the best the can get from their farm works..
The raiders showed no mercy.
Steel flashed in the gloaming. Torches soared through windows. The cries of mothers clutching infants bled into the guttural roars of killers drunk on slaughter. In minutes, the lanes were rivers of blood and fire, each house a pyre, each life extinguished with indifference.
By midnight, only ruin remained.
It was then, in that silence broken only by the crackle of burning wood, that a sound rose from the ashes.
Thin. Trembling. Yet piercing.
A baby's cry.
The killers, busy stripping corpses of jewelry and boots, froze. For a long moment, none moved.
One spat into the dirt. "Another brat," he muttered, his voice hoarse with smoke and drink. "Leave it. The fire will finish the work."
But the crying did not weaken. It carried across the ruins, steady as a heartbeat.
The war-band exchanged uneasy glances. These were not soft men. They had gutted children before, broken skulls against stones, laughed while infants burned in their cradles. But there was something different about this sound. Not fragile. Not pleading. Almost… accusing.
"Find it," their captain growled. His face was a mask of scars, one eye clouded white, the other sharp as a hawk's. "If a child lives, it must die."
They followed the sound to a hut half-collapsed, its roof a tangle of smoldering reeds. The doorway had fallen inward, hiding what lay inside. The men pried apart charred beams with their axes until the cry grew louder, rising above the hiss of embers.
There — in the corner, sheltered by what had once been a mother's body.
The woman was burned black, arms curled around the small bundle as though death itself could not part her grip. She was already stiff, face frozen in a scream, flesh split and blistered. And yet… within those scorched limbs, the baby lived.
The raiders stopped. One cursed and stepped back.
The child's skin was untouched, smooth and pale beneath the soot. His tiny fists flailed with startling strength. And then as if sensing their presence he opened his eyes.
The fire seemed to dim.
The raiders recoiled.
The eyes that stared back at them were not the eyes of an infant. They burned faintly in the darkness, two cold embers smoldering in a face too young to hold such a gaze. Veins like shadows traced faint lines across his temples, pulsing with a rhythm out of time with his heartbeat.
One raider muttered a prayer. Another spat again, though his mouth was dry. "Cursed spawn," he whispered. "Born of shadow."
The captain snarled, raising his blade, swinging it over and over again but he could not strike.
The child had gone silent. No longer crying, no longer restless. He only stared at the men who towered above him. Stared with a stillness that was not human. Stared until even the scarred captain felt the weight of that gaze pressing into him, heavy and cold, as if the infant were measuring him, judging him.
The captain lowered his sword, looking very much terrified but couldn't show it off...
"Leave it," he said. His voice was flat, almost strangled.
"But—"
"Leave it."
They obeyed.
The raiders burned the last of the huts and butchered the cattle for sport. They all were terrified and full of thoughts but did not touch the child. Not one of them dared step closer again.
By dawn, the village was silent. Ash blanketed the fields like snow. Carrion birds circled above, their cries harsh and greedy. Smoke clung to the earth, wrapping the corpses in a shroud of gray.
And still the child lived.
The mother's arms had finally slackened, but no fire had touched his skin. No beast came near. The crows landed on rooftops and fence posts, but not within the hut. The jackals padded around the outskirts of the ruins, sniffing the air, but when they neared the child they whimpered and fled.
"Day 1"
"Day 2"
"Day 3"
On the fourth day, a man came.
He was cloaked in black, his hood shadowing his features, his boots soundless as he crossed the ash-strewn earth. Unlike the raiders or the scavengers who came before him, he did not wander or search. His steps led him straight to the hut, as though the smoke itself had whispered the path to him.
The child was silent now, his eyes half-closed. He did not cry when the cloaked man knelt and peeled away the charred arms of his mother. He only blinked slowly, watching with a calm that no infant should have possessed.
The man lifted him. The child weighed almost nothing, fragile as glass, yet there was something heavy in the way he fit into the man's grasp. A heaviness not of flesh, but of fate.
The man studied him. Pale skin dusted gray by soot. Veins faintly dark beneath the flesh, twitching as though alive. And those eyes — gods above, those eyes. No child's gaze should hold such sharpness. No baby should look back at the world as if it were prey.
A slow smile curved the man's lips. But it was not the smile of warmth or mercy. It was the smile of one who had found a treasure, a tool, a weapon.
"The guildmaster will want to see this one," he murmured. His voice was low, smooth, dangerous.
He wrapped the infant in his cloak and rose, stepping out into the dawn. Behind him, the village lay silent and ruined, nothing but ash and bone.
The child did not look back nor cry ever again.
---
Thus began the tale of the Youngest Assassin. Born not in love of a mom, not in mercy,nor in fear, but in fire, in ash, in the silence of killers who should have slain him but could not cuz he was that one whom even the shadows becomes silent and humble to have him pass through...
A child whose very features struck fear into hardened men.
A child who grow not in the arms of family, but in the shadows of murderers and never understood what love was all about but war..
A child who was never truly a child at all.
The Child of Ashes had entered the world.
And the world would never forget him...
Chapter 2: Found by Shadows
The Hollow was not a place men stumbled upon.
It was not marked on maps, nor spoken of in taverns except in whispers. To the common folk, it was legend — a tale told to frighten children into obedience. But Kali's journey into it began before he could speak, carried in the arms of the cloaked man who had found him among the ashes.
The Hollow lay buried beneath a ridge of jagged stone. From the outside, the entrance appeared as nothing more than a crack in the cliffside, narrow and choked with thornbush. Yet for those who knew the way, it opened into tunnels that spiraled down into the dark.
The cloaked man descended without hesitation.
No sound accompanied him — not the crunch of gravel beneath boots, not the rustle of cloak fabric. Even the child in his arms was silent, his head nestled against the black folds, his eyes half-lidded but alert.
The deeper they went, the cooler the air grew, damp with the smell of stone and stale smoke. Eventually, torchlight flickered across the walls, and voices murmured.
The Hollow widened.
It was vast — a cavern the size of a cathedral, its ceiling so high it was lost in darkness. Tunnels branched in every direction, some leading deeper, others coiling upward into unseen chambers. Rope bridges stretched across crevices that glowed faintly with moss, their shadows swaying like giant webs.
This was no mere den. This was a kingdom carved beneath the earth.
And its subjects were killers and fight in shadows..
Men and women moved through the space like wraiths. Some wore leather dyed black, others chainmail oiled to silence every link. Faces were covered with masks, scarves, or paint. Knives glinted at belts, and the sound of whetstones rasped steadily from shadowed alcoves.
The cloaked man walked among them. All glanced at the bundle in his arms. Some stopped sharpening their blades. Some whispered, voices low.
"A babe?"
"Why would he bring one here?"
But then the infant opened his eyes, and the whispers ceased. The men and women turned quickly away, muttering prayers beneath their breath.
The cloaked man did not slow. He carried Kali through the hall, up the stone steps carved into the back wall, until he reached the Guildmaster's chamber.
---
The Guildmaster's throne stood alone in the cavern's heart.
It was not adorned with jewels or gold. It was hewn from stone and inlaid with bones — femurs, ribs, skull fragments — polished to gleam pale in the torchlight. Behind it hung banners stolen from dead lords, their crests slashed and darkened with dried blood. A rack of daggers stood at his side, each blade unique, each blade taken from a rival guildmaster slain in shadow.
And upon this throne sat the Guildmaster.
He was ageless. His hair white, but his back straight as a sword, his skin smooth as oiled leather, and his eyes — black, endless, bottomless. To gaze into them was to feel the same weight one felt when peering over the lip of a bottomless chasm.
He did not speak when the cloaked man approached. He simply watched.
The infant blinked. The Guildmaster's eyes narrowed.
The Hollow seemed to still.
Finally, the Guildmaster leaned forward. "Curious," he murmured, his voice soft but carrying through the chamber. "The eyes of this one… they are not new. They have seen before."
The cloaked man knelt and laid the child upon the cold stone floor. "He is no ordinary orphan. I found him among ashes. The fire burned everything, yet it spared him. Raiders drew steel to kill him, yet none could. Even the beasts refused him."
The Guildmaster descended from his throne, steps soundless, until he stood over the infant.
The child opened his eyes again.
And for the briefest instant, the Guildmaster — who had slit a king's throat in his own bed, who had poisoned dukes and toppled empires, who had walked through fire and shadow without flinching — paused. His expression did not change, but his eyes sharpened.
"This one…" His voice was quiet, intent. "…This one is no child."
The torches guttered as if wind had touched them.
The assassins gathered in the chamber looked at one another, unease crawling in their guts. They were killers raised without pity, and yet a child's gaze unsettled them.
At last, the Guildmaster touched the boy's cheek. The air seemed to recoil. His lips curved faintly.
"Yes," he whispered. "You will be ours."
---
That night, the guild performed a ritual for the child's induction.
A circle of assassins gathered in the training hall, torches dimmed until only the center glowed. The infant was placed upon a slab of stone, bare save for a single black dagger laid beside him.
The Guildmaster spoke. His words were old, older than the kingdoms above. "From this night, you are bound. You will drink shadow before milk, steel before bread. You will walk in night before you walk in day. And you will kill before you speak."
The assassins bowed their heads.
The Guildmaster touched the infant's brow and gave him a name. "Kali," he whispered. "For Kali means the black one," "time," and "death" in the Old Tongue. Born of ashes, shaped by ashes, and to ashes you shall return all who stand before you."
The torches flared. The assassins hissed the name in unison, their voices a chilling whisper.
Kali.
Kali.
Kali.
---
The following months proved the child stranger still.
The guild's wet nurse — a silent, hollow-eyed widow named mira — was assigned to his care. She had lost her own children to fever years ago, yet when she held Kali she trembled. He never cried, not once. He fed quietly, eyes locked upon her until she could no longer meet his gaze. When he slept, his lids fluttered but never fully closed, leaving a thin crescent of unnatural light.
Rumors spread.
One assassin claimed he had seen the shadows bend toward the crib as though reaching for him. Another swore that when Kali's eyes fixed upon him, his knife-hand shook. Even the rats that infested the Hollow avoided the chamber where he lay.
Children raised in the guild — orphans, beggars, sons of debtors sold for coin — learned quickly to stay away from him. They whispered his name with fear, as though speaking it too loudly would summon his gaze.
But the Guildmaster was pleased with all this and felt much happy having Kali as one of them.
He often visited the child's chamber in silence, watching from the doorway as Kali stared back. In those eyes, the Guildmaster saw not frailty, but inevitability. A destiny written in fire and shadow, fearless and strong filled with powers from the other world...
"This one," he said to his lieutenants, "will be sharpened into the finest blade the guild has ever wielded."
And so Kali grew, cradled not in love but in fear, not in lullabies but in silence.
The Child of Ashes, feared even in his crib...
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