Every puppet has a puppeteer.
And every quest for vengeance is just a walk through a maze designed by a greater evil.
The real monster is not the one you are hunting.
It is the one who sent you on the hunt in the first place.
It took Lysandra five days to crawl out of the mountains.
She was a broken thing. Her body was wracked with cold, her leg was a throbbing agony, and the cut on her throat was a constant, stinging reminder of her failure.
But the true wound was deeper. It was the wound to her soul.
She, the Silver Huntress, the Order's perfect weapon, had been defeated. Not just beaten. She had been dismantled, humiliated, and then dismissed.
Her life had been given back to her as an insult. A brand of shame she would wear forever.
Her return to the Order's forward command post sent a shockwave of disbelief through the ranks.
The soldiers, who had only ever seen her return pristine and victorious, now saw a ghost. Her silver armor was battered and dull. Her face was pale and bruised. Her eyes, once as cold and clear as a winter sky, were now clouded with a storm of shame and confusion.
She walked into the command tent, her limp a declaration of her defeat. Kael and the other senior commanders stood, their faces a mixture of shock and pity.
She hated their pity more than she hated her wounds.
"Report," was the only word she spoke.
Her voice was hoarse, but it held the iron of her training.
She recounted the events with clinical, brutal honesty. The trap at the monastery. The duel. The second, more elaborate trap in the ice caves. The final fight. The… mercy.
As she spoke, a thick silence fell over the tent. The commanders looked at each other, their faces growing paler.
"He trapped you?" Kael asked, his voice a disbelieving whisper. "He let you live?"
"He did not let me live," Lysandra corrected him, her voice dripping with self-loathing. "He used me. He turned me into a message."
"This is impossible," another commander said, shaking his head. "A boy, alone in the mountains…"
"He is not a boy," Lysandra snapped, her control finally breaking for a moment. "He is his father's son, but colder. He fights with the rage of a demon, but he thinks with the patience of a spider. We have underestimated him. We have underestimated him completely."
Fear, a feeling these hardened warriors had not felt in years, began to creep into the room.
This was not a simple manhunt. This was something else entirely.
They were hunting a ghost that could think.
Miles away, in the opulent capital city of Aethelgard, the report reached its final destination.
Grandmaster Valerius sat in his private study, a room of dark wood, rich tapestries, and ancient, forbidden texts. The air smelled of old paper and expensive wine.
He read Lysandra's report, a faint, amused smile playing on his lips.
"Fascinating," he murmured to himself, swirling a glass of deep red wine.
His chief aide, a stern man with the face of a hawk, stood rigidly by the desk. "Grandmaster, the council is in an uproar. Lysandra's failure… they say the boy is a menace that must be exterminated. They wish to deploy a full legion."
Valerius laughed, a soft, condescending chuckle. "A legion? To hunt one broken child? They are fools. They are scared."
He took a sip of his wine.
"They see a threat. I see… a game. A far more interesting game than I have played in years."
"But, Grandmaster," the aide pressed. "The boy's skill… his ruthlessness…"
"His 'ruthlessness' has a flaw," Valerius interrupted, setting his glass down. "He let our dear Lysandra live. Why? A moment of weakness? A pang of his father's foolish honor?"
He stood and walked to the large window overlooking the city lights.
"No. It was arrogance. The arrogance of a boy who thinks he understands the board. He wants to sow fear. He wants to send a message."
Valerius smiled, his reflection a dark, predatory shape in the glass.
"Let him. Let the wolf pup howl. It will be all the more satisfying when I finally put him on a leash."
The Grandmaster was not afraid.
He was entertained. The puppeteer had just noticed one of his puppets was trying to cut its own strings. It was delightful.
Adrian did not know he was a source of amusement.
He had found a new lair, a dry, forgotten tomb carved into a cliff face, its entrance hidden by a waterfall.
He was methodically going through the items he had taken from Lysandra. During their final struggle in the cave, in the chaos of the brawl, he had not just disarmed her. With a quick, practiced motion, he had ripped a sealed leather dispatch tube from her belt.
It had been an act of instinct. Information was a weapon.
Now, he broke the wax seal, the sigil of the Order crumbling under his thumb.
Inside was a single, rolled parchment. The writing was in the Order's military cipher, a code he had learned from his father's old war journals.
His fingers, though steady, felt clumsy as he translated the coded message. It was a copy of Lysandra's original orders.
His eyes scanned the words. Primary target: Adrian Volkov. Son of Kazimir. Terminate with extreme prejudice.
It was what he expected.
But then he saw the secondary protocols. A section titled: "Contingency Protocol: Sanctuary."
His blood ran cold.
The orders were clear. In the event of Kazimir Volkov's death, the secondary objective was to secure the Sanctuary at all costs. It listed items to be retrieved.
"All journals, maps, and historical texts."
"Any artifacts bearing the twin-serpent sigil."
"Secure the target's mother, Elara of the Silver Vein, for interrogation. If retrieval is not possible, prioritize elimination. The bloodline must not continue."
Adrian read the last line again. And again.
The bloodline must not continue.
The world tilted.
His mother. They had not just killed her because she was there. They had targeted her. Her, specifically.
He thought back to the night of red snow. The Grandmaster's words. Surrender the beast-child. They had not been talking about his father's heritage. They had been talking about his mother's.
The massacre… it was not just retribution against a retired general.
It was a cover-up.
His father's death had been the secondary objective. The convenient excuse.
The real prize, the real target, was his mother. And whatever secret she carried in her blood.
He stumbled back, his hand clutching the parchment.
He had been so blind. So arrogant.
He had been fighting a war of personal vengeance, a simple, straightforward quest to kill the men who had murdered his family.
He saw now that he had not been fighting a war at all.
He had been playing a child's game in the shadow of a much larger, darker conflict.
He pulled out his father's journal, his hands trembling with a new, cold fury. He opened it to the blood-stained list of names.
Valerius. Tiberius. Lysandra.
He looked at the names, and for the first time, he saw them for what they were.
Pawns. Tools. Swords.
His father had not been protecting their family from a grudge. He had been protecting a secret. A secret so important, the Order was willing to slaughter dozens of its own knights to bury it.
Adrian looked up from the journal, his mismatched eyes staring into the darkness of the tomb.
His list was wrong. It was incomplete.
There were other names. Names above the ones written in this book.
The name of the hand that wielded the swords.
The name of the puppeteer.
His hunt had just begun.