Chapter 1

People came to see blood spilled that day — just not the executioner's.

Entire families, merchants, beggars, and children whose eyes were far too wide for what they were about to witness crowded around a makeshift wooden platform. On it, four stakes jutted up like rotten teeth in the mouth of a starving beast. On the first, a young man was still struggling. On the second, an older woman had already stopped trying. On the third, a noose hung, eagerly awaiting its next neck. And the fourth... was still empty.

"By the authority of His Excellency, Lord Varten the Just, these criminals have been condemned for theft, insubordination, and minor witchcraft!" bellowed the herald in a nasal voice, so theatrically exaggerated that someone in the crowd laughed. Just one. The rest held a thick, heavy silence — heavy with fear or morbid fascination.

From a raised platform under a blood-red canopy, Lord Varten watched the spectacle with the same look a butcher might give his knife as it does the job. Fat, bejeweled, and with a beard so perfectly braided it looked fake, he raised a hand to give the final order.

And then it happened.

A flash streaked through the air like a lazy comet.

The crowd didn't see it coming, but they heard the impact. A wet crack — nothing grand, almost anticlimactic. Like squashing an overripe fruit.

Lord Varten staggered.

His eyes went wide — first with surprise... then outrage... then nothing at all. A dagger jutted from his neck, right between jaw and collarbone. The red that spilled was elegant, clean — like the first stroke of a talented painter.

The platform erupted in screams.

And from the top of the bell tower, with the wind whipping my cloak like in a bad stage play, I smiled.

⸻

Before I was Iren, before the huts and the slit rabbits... I was the White Raven.

A name whispered in some circles as a threat. In others, as a promise.

I never left a note. Never signed a name. Just a white knife. Ceramic. Cold. Clean. Unmistakable.
And always... in the right place.

I didn't take just any job. I wasn't some flat-rate thug.

There were rules. I had a code.

And while that didn't make me any less of a killer, it did make me something rarer: consistent.

Most of my targets were monsters in expensive suits.
An Eastern European politician selling weapons to both sides of a civil war while smiling for TV interviews.
A pharmaceutical magnate who skipped protocols, faked trials, and sold poison wrapped in legal labels.
The head of a human trafficking ring in the Mediterranean. That one was personal.

My peak — the biggest job I ever got — was taking out a dictator.
I won't say the country. Not for me, for you.
Just know he was a man who outlawed thinking, kidnapped journalists, and ruled his people with a marble smile and terror.

It was the only time I got paid in gold bars. Not out of greed — but because it was the cleanest way to cover my tracks.

I entered his palace during a diplomatic gala. Dressed as a waiter, with maximum security in full swing. One glass of wine was all it took.
He died dancing with an ambassador. Heart attack, they said.
Ironically accurate. Not a lie, but not exactly the truth either.

I didn't leave my signature this time. The risk was too high. A white knife stuck in his chest would've raised too many alarms and ended everything. In this case, the job itself had to matter more than vanity.

I walked out.
Clean. Quiet. Professional.

And yet, the final contract of the great White Raven... was a small one.

No one important. No one in power.
Just a man who slipped through the cracks.
Who raped, tortured, and likely buried alive a fourteen-year-old girl.

The trial was a joke. Witnesses vanished. Evidence "lost." A lawyer who was way too well-paid and far too confident.
The family found me through an anonymous network. They didn't want justice. They wanted peace.
They wanted to sleep at night without seeing his face.

I said yes. Not for the money — which I no longer needed — but because of what I saw in the mother.
That shattered look I knew by heart. The look of someone who didn't want to go on.

I found him in a southern city. Living like nothing had happened. Drinking in bars. Playing poker. With a new girlfriend.
I entered his home at three in the morning. He was asleep.
He never woke up.

I drove home under a light drizzle. It was summer, but the air was cool.
It was 6:17 AM.
I entered my apartment. Third floor, no elevator. I liked the third floor for some reason, even though I was the only resident and owner of the entire building — a discreet bunker I'd made for myself.

I took off my gloves. Opened the pizza box I'd left on the counter. Cold, but still good.
Turned on the TV. A beaver documentary. The narrator was way too enthusiastic for the hour.

I sat down.
Took a bite.

Felt a pain in my chest.
Thought it was heartburn.
Then came the pressure. The shortness of breath. The blurry vision.

My last thought wasn't dramatic. Not profound.
It was somewhere between:

"Seriously?"

and

"You've got to be kidding me."

And just like that, I died.

The White Raven. Elite hitman. Tyrant hunter.
Dead in my underwear. Cheese on my chin. A beaver building a dam on TV.

I don't remember an afterlife. No tunnels of light. No ghostly grandmas telling me "It's not your time, dear."
Next thing I knew, I was crying. And not the poetic kind. I mean actually crying. Like a baby.
Because I was a baby.

"He's healthy!" cried a woman with a village accent. "And he's got the weirdest eyes I've ever seen!"

Weird, yeah. That hadn't changed. I'd always had these ash-colored eyes — a mix of gray and homicide.
For some reason, I'd brought them with me.

The family who took me in wasn't bad. Simple folks. Calloused hands, gappy smiles. Peasants.
They lived in a shack, ate root soup, and peed in buckets.
Welcome to the wonderful new world.

But it didn't take long to realize this place wasn't just medieval...

There were signs: knights riding things that weren't horses, people talking about "mana" like it was tea, and one guy who spent an entire spring selling "magic focus stones" yelling, "Three for one coin! Clean your aura and purify your armpits!"

I was thrilled. Magic. Real magic!
Maybe I'd get to throw fireballs, summon shadows, bend time...

My first encounter with magic came at age five.

A traveling wizard came to town. Called himself "Master Belzador." Wore robes that smelled like sweat and had a beard that was clearly a dead cat glued on with wax.

"I've come to show you the arcane arts!" he declared.

Us kids (myself included) sat in the mud, wide-eyed. Belzador raised his hands, muttered some words that sounded like hiccups with bad grammar, and...

Zap!

A blue spark shot from his fingers and hit a rock. The rock wobbled a bit. Got slightly warm. Not even hot.
I picked it up and said:

"That was it?"

"Hey!" snapped the wizard, visibly offended. "That was a Scorching Light Spark! Level two!"

"And if you train really hard, can you make a bigger one?"

"Yes! It can cause scratches! Even itching!"

Not exactly what I'd dreamed of. I wanted firestorms, portals to other realms, dragon summoning with a word, or — better — a wand that shoots lightning.
I tried to convince myself maybe it was just that hobo wizard who made magic seem so disappointing...

That night, I made a decision:
If this world gave me disappointing magic, then I'd bring what I did know — how to kill without being seen.

⸻

Trained, stealthy, and with blades I'd crafted myself, I became the terror of the forest rabbits. Literally. Not a single one alive within a hundred meters of my house.
My parents thought I had the soul of a hunter.
Being nearly a teen, I wasn't half bad — though I had an advantage.

They didn't know I was really practicing how to kill.
With precision, stealth, and a touch of elegance.

Back then, I still believed in this world's system. Thought the feudal lords were strict, yes, but fair.
Thought hanging people in the square was necessary.
That the rules kept order.

Until the day I saw a boy — maybe eight years old — crying while they tied the noose around his neck.

"Says he stole bread," a villager told me. "But no one saw him. The baker said a piece was missing. And you know how the Lord is... can't let things like this slide."

That was the first time I felt that old itch. The one I used to get in my previous life when someone broke the rules of the game.

It was also the first time I climbed a bell tower with a knife in hand and fury in my heart.

⸻

I shouted something before disappearing from the bell tower — I don't remember what.
Something dramatic. Maybe:

"Judgment has come!"

Or maybe just:

"Screw you, aristocratic bastards!"

Doesn't matter. It wasn't a small target, but my aim never missed.

As I fled across the rooftops, with guards scrambling like headless chickens, I knew one thing for sure:

This world didn't need grand wizards.

It needed hitmen with principles.

And I was back in business.