The training knife slipped from Azel Von Rashdov's small hand with a soft sigh of displaced air, spinning end over end before thunking into the wooden target across the hall.
Dead center. Again.
"Good," he whispered to himself, trying to sound like his father did when he taught him.
He was only five years old, and he didn't even come up to the practice dummy's waist, but his throws were more consistent every time he practiced.
He'd show his father tomorrow morning — and his father would be proud.
---
The family training hall was cold this time of night.
Winter crept through the Rashdov estate's stone walls despite the warming enchantments woven into the foundation.
Azel's breath came out in small clouds as he retrieved his practice knife from the target.
Dull-edged, child-sized — it was perfectly weighted for his small hands.
His mother said he was too young to practice with real weapons, but his father didn't listen.
"A Rashdov must be prepared," Valdis always said. "The world doesn't care how old you are."
Azel took his place at the throwing line once more, eyes on the target.
Twenty paces.
He could do it from fifteen consistently now, but twenty was hard. His arm wasn't strong enough yet.
But he'd keep practicing until—
---
A scream pierced the night.
Not just any scream. His mother's voice, from somewhere in the main estate.
But it wasn't a scream of pain or fear — it was a war cry, the kind Azel had only heard during the family's training demonstrations.
The sound that meant danger.
Real danger.
---
The practice knife clattered from Azel's suddenly nerveless fingers onto the stone floor.
Another sound followed — the shattering of glass, the sound of steel on steel.
Shouts. Men's voices he didn't recognize.
And underneath it all, a sound like thunder that Azel's training-sharpened instincts identified as many feet moving fast.
Something was wrong.
Something was very, very wrong.
---
Azel ran.
His small feet skidded on the polished marble floors as he fled from the training hall toward the main estate, his heart thudding against his ribs.
The connecting corridor seemed to stretch on for miles, shadows dancing in the lamplight.
The sounds drew closer — steel clashing, wood splintering, his mother's voice screaming commands.
He burst through the carved double doors into the grand hall — and stopped.
---
The scene before him made no sense.
His mind couldn't process it, couldn't make the pieces fit together into anything resembling the safe, ordered world he'd known his entire life.
His father — Valdis Von Rashdov, the most dangerous man Azel had ever seen, the warrior who moved through training exercises like water rushing downhill — was fighting.
Actually fighting.
Not training. Not demonstrating.
Fighting for his life.
---
Three figures in black masks surrounded Valdis in the center of the grand hall.
They moved with practiced precision, their blades flashing in the chandelier's light.
Valdis was faster, more skilled — his family sword singing through the air in arcs that seemed to trace eldritch runes in reality itself.
The Valdris style, passed down through millennia of Rashdovs.
Liquid death made manifest.
---
Even as Azel stared, frozen in the doorway, his father's blade found an opening.
One attacker crumpled to the ground with a gurgling scream, clutching his throat.
A second fell a heartbeat later, Valdis's sword buried in his chest.
But the third attacker lunged at the same time, and Valdis couldn't quite dodge.
A dagger — black metal, wickedly curved — sliced across his shoulder.
The wound should have been superficial… but Valdis stumbled.
His movements — so fluid a moment before — suddenly sluggish.
Poison.
---
On the far side of the hall, near the grand staircase, his mother was fighting with deadly elegance.
Elara Von Rashdov, who always seemed so kind during the day — who read Azel bedtime stories and brushed his hair — was now a hurricane of calculated violence.
She wielded two short blades, protecting Azel's older siblings — Kieran and Lyanna — who pressed against her back.
Kieran, twelve years old and already showing signs of his father's height, clutched a training sword in white-knuckled hands.
Lyanna, nine, copper-dark hair wild around her face, held a dagger in a guard position their mother had taught her.
Both of their faces were deathly pale with terror, but neither was crying.
Rashdov children didn't cry.
Not when it mattered.
---
Four more masked figures surrounded Elara, circling like wolves.
They moved differently than Valdis's attackers — less skilled perhaps, but coordinated.
Clearly trained.
This wasn't a random raid.
This was planned.
---
More assassins were pouring through the shattered windows now, black-clad shadows dropping silently into the hall.
How many? Ten? Fifteen?
Too many.
The mansion was under full assault.
Glass exploded inward from three more windows at once.
The attackers spread with military precision, cutting off exits, surrounding.
They wore no colors, no insignia — just black leather and dark cloth masks that showed only their eyes.
---
"Azel!"
His mother's voice cut through the fray.
She'd seen him.
"RUN!"
But Azel couldn't move.
His five-year-old legs had turned to stone, rooted to the threshold.
He watched his father — his invincible, untouchable father — stagger as the poison coursed through his body.
Valdis managed to kill the third attacker, but his movements were getting slower with each passing second.
Two more assassins rushed him from behind.
---
Elara screamed something in the old language — words Azel had been forbidden to learn yet.
An enchantment.
Light flared around her blades, and one of her attackers fell back, clutching his face.
But she was outnumbered, and she couldn't protect Kieran and Lyanna while fighting four opponents at once.
---
A window to Azel's left exploded.
He flinched back as an assassin landed in a crouch barely ten feet away.
The figure rose, dark eyes fixing on Azel through the mask's eyeholes.
A blade appeared in the assassin's hand — metal so black it seemed to absorb the light.
The assassin took a step toward him.
---
"AZEL, RUN!"
Lyanna's voice — shrill and terrified — finally cut through his paralysis.
Azel looked toward his sister. Their eyes met across the chaos of the hall.
In that moment, something passed between them — an understanding that transcended words.
Lyanna knew.
She knew what was happening, knew this wasn't something they would survive, knew that Azel had to run.
Had to hide.
Had to live.
---
Her eyes were so wide. So afraid.
And then Kieran moved.
Azel's brother — brave, stupid, heroic Kieran — raised his training sword and charged.
Not at the assassins surrounding their mother, but at the one closing on Azel.
A twelve-year-old boy with a wooden practice blade, charging a trained killer to protect his little brother.
"NO!"
Elara's scream ricocheted off the marble walls.
The assassin's blade moved almost lazily, as if the entire scene was underwater.
Azel watched the dark metal cut through his brother's chest with horrible, impossible ease.
Like pushing through water.
Like Kieran was made of nothing at all.
---
The training sword clattered on the marble floor.
Kieran looked down at the blade sticking out of his chest, his face one of confusion more than pain.
He reached up with one trembling hand, touched the metal as if to make sure it was real.
His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Just blood.
So much blood.
The assassin withdrew the blade, and Kieran collapsed.
He hit the floor hard — a sound Azel would hear in his nightmares for the rest of his life.
Red spread across the white marble.
Steam rose from it in the cold air, little wisps like breath in winter.
Kieran's eyes stared at nothing — already distant, already gone.
---
Azel's mind went blank.
Not with shock, not with horror — just blank.
As if someone had reached into his skull and scooped out everything that made him a child, everything innocent, everything that had existed before this moment.
The world had ended.
It just hadn't stopped moving yet.
---
Across the hall, Lyanna was screaming his name, her voice raw and desperate.
Elara was fighting harder, more desperately, trying to reach Azel but unable to break through the wall of assassins.
Valdis had dropped to his knees, the poison finally dragging him down — though he still tried to raise his sword.
The mansion was dying.
His family was dying.
And Azel stood in the doorway, five years old, watching his brother's blood spread across marble that had been in his family for three hundred years — his mind utterly, completely blank.
---
The assassin who had killed Kieran looked up from the body, dark eyes fixing on Azel once more.
The blade rose again, crimson droplets falling from the black metal.
The figure took another step forward.
Azel still couldn't move.
Lyanna's scream grew louder, more desperate, but the sound seemed to come from very far away.
From another world.
A world where screaming mattered.
Where anything mattered.
Where—
---
More assassins poured through the windows.
The grand hall was filling with them like a cup overflowing with darkness.
There were too many.
Far too many.
This wasn't a fight anymore.
It was a massacre.
And Azel Von Rashdov, five years old, stood frozen in the doorway and watched his entire world burn.
---
End of Chapter 1