## Chapter 1 — The Man With No Name
The village of Ashveil smelled of rot and rain.
Zero moved through its narrow streets like a ghost, his worn boots barely making a sound against the cobblestones slick with the night's downpour. His dark cloak clung to his broad shoulders, soaked through, though he didn't seem to notice — or didn't seem to care. The hood was pulled low over his face, hiding the sharp angles of his jaw, the pale scar that ran from his left temple to the corner of his mouth. Hiding his eyes most of all. Eyes that had seen things no man should carry and yet carried them still, like stones at the bottom of a deep river.
Ashveil was a dying place. That much was clear even in the dark. The buildings leaned against one another like sick men sharing a fever, their timber frames warped and blackened with age. The market stalls were shuttered and bolted — not because of the hour, but because of fear. Lanterns flickered weakly in upper windows, and behind them, shadows moved with the careful, deliberate slowness of people who had learned not to draw attention to themselves.
Zero had seen a hundred villages like this.
He had burned some of them.
He pushed that thought aside and ducked under the low frame of a tavern door, stepping into the amber glow of a fire that had no business being as warm as it was. The tavern was called The Hollow Crown — he knew this not from the rotted sign outside but from the man who had hired him. The man who had described this place in precise, rehearsed detail, the way people do when they've been planning something for a very long time.
The interior was sparse. A handful of patrons nursed their drinks without speaking, each one seated as far from the others as the room allowed. The barmaid, a heavyset woman with tired eyes, glanced at Zero when he entered and then looked away — deliberately, intentionally — the way people look away from things they know are dangerous.
Smart woman.
Zero took a stool at the far end of the bar, positioning his back to the wall. Old habit. His gaze moved slowly across the room, cataloguing exits, measuring distances, reading postures. The man at the corner table with the trembling hands. The one near the fire whose eyes hadn't moved from the door since Zero walked in. The one in the back whose drink had gone untouched for ten minutes.
Three of them. Possibly more outside.
He had expected this.
The barmaid drifted close, pretending to wipe the bar. Without looking up, she slid a folded piece of parchment toward him. He took it with two fingers, opened it beneath the counter's edge.
"They know you're coming. Don't trust the client. The Crown is already watching."
No signature.
Zero stared at the words for a long moment, then folded the parchment and placed it into the candle at the end of the bar, watching it curl and blacken into nothing.
The Crown. He'd heard the name whispered in three different cities across two different kingdoms. A shadow organization. A myth, some said. An empire built entirely in darkness — no throne, no banner, no face. Just influence. Just fear. Just the quiet, suffocating reach of something ancient and patient.
And apparently, they were already here.
Zero straightened slowly. He rolled his neck until it cracked, then pulled the edge of his cloak back on one side — not far, just enough. Enough to let the firelight catch the blade at his hip. Enough for the man near the fire to see it and stiffen.
He stood.
"Tell your friends outside," Zero said quietly, to no one and everyone, "that I'll be keeping the meeting."
He walked toward the back room without waiting for a response.
Behind him, he heard the scrape of a chair. The sound of someone standing. The soft, unmistakable whisper of a blade being drawn.
He didn't turn around.
He didn't need to.
---c
End of Chapter 1