(Anzuyi Bizen – 1st Person POV)
I wake to the smell of iron.
It's everywhere—on the ground, on my tongue, inside my lungs. For a moment I can't remember where I am, only that the sky is red and the snow underneath me isn't cold anymore. Then I hear his voice—the one sound my mind never forgot even after all the years of running.
Precise. Measured. Bored.
"The little shadow from House Bizen," he says. "I assumed the family had disposed of its error."
My breath freezes. My fingers twitch against the ground, but my body refuses to rise. That voice crawls under my skin like a parasite. Around me, ogres move in coordinated rhythm, not like beasts but like machines trained to obey. And there—between their massive legs—I see him. The Valerian mage. The same man who once called me subject forty-three.
My vision shakes. The battlefield dissolves, replaced by white marble floors and incense smoke. I'm twelve again, standing before the clan's council chamber, too small to reach the table where my father sits. The seal of Bizen hangs behind him, heavy as judgment.
Father doesn't look at me. His eyes are on a treaty scroll.
"The Valerians require assurance of loyalty," he says. His voice is calm, detached—an executioner's tone dressed in diplomacy.
My mother nods once. "She is quiet. The right choice."
They never said my name. I wasn't worth the syllables.
I want to scream at them, but in memory I do what I always did—stay silent. I remember thinking that silence was a shield, that if I never made noise, I would stop existing. Invisible children can't be sold.
Except I was.
The flashback shatters. I'm back in the present, staring at the mage's gloved hand as it lifts, brushing my cheek like a collector checking his property. I recoil. The cold of his touch burns worse than the wound in my ribs.
"I remember that face," he murmurs. "Such remarkable genetic symmetry. The Bizen line has always produced fascinating specimens."
The click-whir of his lenses cuts through the din of battle. My stomach heaves. Somewhere in the distance, Kaito roars—his greatsword crashing against flesh, steel, bone. I see him moving, but he feels far away, separated by invisible glass. My body won't respond. I'm strapped to the table again.
The lab smelled of antiseptic and incense. The lights never dimmed. The air vibrated with the hum of runes and machines.
"Silence is a symptom of fear," the mage had told me once, while his assistants adjusted the restraints. "We will fix that flaw."
Every word back then was recorded, dissected. They wanted to make stealth something measurable—something extractable. I was twelve. I didn't know what they meant by enhancing bloodlines. I learned when they began testing pain thresholds. When the needles hummed. When my own shadows betrayed me.
I never screamed. That was my rebellion.
I remember the escape: the alarms blaring, the smell of burning paper and ozone. Someone—something—had attacked the facility. Amid the chaos, I slipped through the flickering lights, moving as I'd been trained. A ghost among monsters. I didn't look back.
I should have died then. Maybe part of me did.
The world snaps into focus again. The mage's robes are still immaculate. His expression, clinical. Kaito stands between us now, blade leveled. Blood streaks down his arm, but his stance is unbroken. The ogres circle like trained hounds, waiting for command.
He fights for me. The realization hits harder than pain.
He fights for a stranger. My own blood sold me for a scroll.
He calls me a coward to save me. They called me quiet to erase me.
The two truths collide. Something breaks loose inside me—not fear, but a sharp, deliberate kind of rage. I can feel it crawling up from the place where my voice used to live.
One of the ogres lunges toward Kaito's back. He doesn't see it. I do.
My hand finds the last dagger at my belt before I even think. My arm trembles, slick with blood, but I throw. The blade spins end over end, striking deep into the creature's leg. It bellows, stumbling into another. Kaito turns, pivots, and his sword tears through them both in one wide arc.
He glances at me, just for a heartbeat.
Our eyes meet through smoke and snow.
It isn't tenderness. It's recognition.
He sees I'm not broken. I see he's not like them.
The world narrows again. Every breath burns. I press a shaking hand to the wound in my side, forcing myself up onto my elbows. The pain helps—it's proof I'm still here, that this body still belongs to me.
The Valerian mage tilts his head, studying me like a puzzle he's already solved. "Still alive," he muses. "That makes you valuable."
His words don't sink in. My heartbeat drowns them out.
Kaito moves closer, fire reflecting off the edge of his black blade. His voice is low, meant only for me. "Stay down."
I almost laugh. I've spent my life staying down. Staying quiet. Staying small.
No more.
The snow around me is streaked red. The world smells of blood and burnt magic. My hands are shaking, but my mind feels cold, clear. I look at the dagger hilt still jutting from my thigh—not to pull it free, but to remember.
Pain means I'm awake.
Awake means I can fight.
I whisper under my breath, the words more for myself than anyone else.
"They wanted a shadow."
The mage's eyes narrow as I push myself to my feet, barely steady.
"I will give them a knife."
---
Kaito advances through the wreckage, and I follow—not as a burden or a witness, but as something else entirely. The sound of the ogres closing in no longer feels overwhelming. It feels rhythmic. Predictable. Like breathing.
The mage raises his staff, light gathering at its tip, and for the first time since that white room, I'm not afraid of him. Fear is what he built me from. Rage is what will unmake him.
Somewhere deep inside, I can still hear my father's voice, calm and distant: She is quiet. The right choice.
Yes. I am quiet.
And I'm going to show them what silence can do.