The war had stolen more than kingdoms, more than fields left barren and cities turned to rubble. It had stolen faces, names, and the laughter of children who never grew old enough to remember their parents. Amelia was one of those children, her memory of the battlefield a blur of fire and iron. When she was carried to the Solari Order, barely clinging to life, she did not even have the strength to cry. She was silent then, as she often would be in the years to come, and the sisters of the Order whispered that silence was her shield.
The Solari Order was not merely a sanctuary of prayer. Hidden behind its radiant walls and glittering stained glass lay a secret order, an order of assassins devoted to the Aurelian Dominion. To the world, they were humble keepers of the faith; to kings and generals, they were the blades in the dark who removed threats before they could bloom. Amelia grew in that duality, between chants of light and the whispers of steel.
From the start, her instructors recognized something different in her. Children came and went in the Order's hidden halls, but none adapted to the rigors of training with the speed Amelia did. She ran faster, climbed higher, and endured punishments that would have broken older students. Her silence was not emptiness, but focus. When others panicked, she calculated. When others hesitated, she struck.
By the time she reached her fifteenth year, Amelia was already spoken of as a prodigy. Her movements were precise, her senses honed to a razor's edge, and her will unyielding. Some of the older assassins muttered that she was born with steel in her veins instead of blood. Yet the sisters of the Order would remind them
'Steel without light is nothing but a weapon of ruin.' Amelia carried both, and that balance made her dangerous.
But she was still a child in heart, though she did not show it. Sometimes, at night, she would creep to the highest balcony of the Solari sanctuary and stare at the stars. She would imagine her parents among them, faceless figures who smiled and told her she was not alone. She never voiced these thoughts, assassins had no luxury for sentiment, but they fueled her determination. If she had survived when so many others had perished, then she would prove that survival had meaning.
The years sharpened her into something more than mortal. Amelia became a shadow that moved with elegance and killed without hesitation. Missions were assigned to her that others dared not accept. A duke's treacherous counselor who whispered to enemy spies, dead. A deserter general who rallied men against the Dominion, silenced. The Solari spoke her name with reverence and fear alike.
And yet, even among whispers of her brilliance, there lingered unease. For every success, Amelia pushed herself further, faster, harder. She could not rest, not when the memory of flames and screams haunted her dreams. She believed she must always be perfect, for a single flaw would mean she had not deserved to live when her parents had died.
It was that belief which would one day break her.
The mission was meant to be straightforward—at least, as straightforward as any assassination could be. She was assigned with three companions, each seasoned assassins sworn to the Solari. Their target was a warlord gathering rebels on the Dominion's fringes. The four of them slipped into enemy territory under cover of night, blades sharpened, plans memorized. Amelia led the way, her confidence unmatched.
But perfection is a fragile thing.
The warlord was waiting. Whether betrayal or miscalculation, Amelia never knew. What she remembered was the sudden snap of traps springing in the darkness, the hiss of arrows loosed from hidden towers, the screams of her companions as steel tore into flesh. The night became chaos, shadows against shadows, blood against blood. Amelia fought like the demon her enemies named her, but there were too many.
One by one, her companions fell, their deaths carved into her memory as clearly as any scar. She tried to rally them, tried to cut a path out, but the plan was shattered. She could not save them. For the first time in her life, Amelia's certainty wavered. For the first time, she failed.
It might have ended there, in the dirt among her fallen kin, had it not been for Mateo. The knight of the Aurelian vanguard crashed into the melee like a storm given flesh, shield blazing with light. His presence carved a path where none had existed, dragging Amelia out of the ruin she had led them into. She lived, but the others did not.
When dawn broke, Amelia stood at the edge of a field of corpses, her hands trembling, her pride shattered. She had always believed herself unbreakable, but the truth was undeniable. Her failure had cost lives, and though Mateo spoke no judgment, the weight of guilt was heavier than any blade.
That morning, Amelia chose exile. She turned her back on the Solari Order, on the Aurelian Dominion, and even on the light she had once sworn to serve. If she could not be perfect, she would not return until she proved herself again. Beyond the Dominion's borders lay the lawless wastes, the places where survival was measured not in victories but in endurance. There she would go, alone.
And so began the legend of the exile of the assassin who vanished into the dark.