PART 1 — THE NIGHT THEY ERASED HIS NAME

They cast me out at midnight, because the Assassin Guild preferred darkness when it wanted to bury the truth.

Rain hammered the black-stone courtyard. Thirty masked assassins stood on the citadel steps, their blades lowered but ready. Above them, Guildmaster Malrec Voss watched me like a man watching a failed weapon being thrown into the sea.

“Caelan Veyr,” he said, his voice cold enough to cut through thunder, “your name is erased. Your oath is dead. Your blood no longer belongs to the citadel.”

A young assassin snapped my dagger in half.

The sound broke something inside me.

I had served them since I was seven. I had killed for them, bled for them, obeyed every order—until they sent me to murder a nine-year-old girl because she had witnessed one of their political secrets.

I refused.

So now they called me traitor.

Malrec descended one step. “Leave before sunrise, or your body will hang from the east tower.”

I looked up through the rain. “You took my blade. You

took my name. But you never owned my blood.”

The ground beneath me trembled.

A golden crack split the ancient stone.

The assassins stepped back.

From beneath the courtyard, something old began to rise.

A crown.

Not shining like treasure, but burning like memory.

And as it hovered before me, the entire citadel heard a whisper from below:

“Blood of the buried kings… finally returned.”