The First Debt

For three days, darkness had claimed him.

It was not the empty, restful dark of sleep, but a fractured void filled with glittering glimpses of a life that was not his own. Akhen was a passenger, a ghost trapped behind the eyes of another, forced to watch a memory unfold through a suffocating veil.

He stood in a hall of impossible grandeur, where polished obsidian floors reflected a starless sky. Before him, four elders sat around a circular table carved from the same night-dark stone. Their forms were indistinct, shimmering with a divine, unbearable light that cast no shadows and seemed to warp the very air around them. He—the body he inhabited—stood at the periphery, just behind the shoulder of one of the beings. A sheaf of notes was clutched in a hand that felt both familiar and alien, the parchment sweating against a tense palm.

The world was a viscous blur, and sound was a dull, pressurized drone in his ears, like being deep underwater where only the thrum of one's own blood is audible. Details were lost to him, but the suffocating weight of the moment was absolute. It was a feeling of profound, holy terror, the awe one feels before a power that can create or unmake with a single thought.

Then, a phrase, sharp as shattered glass, cut through the haze. It was spoken by one of the radiant figures, the voice not loud, but possessing a finality that could unmake mountains.

“...eradicate them all from inside. We no longer need them.”

A second voice, smoother but just as cold, echoed the first, sealing the decree.

“Eradicate every single one of them.”

The body Akhen wore went rigid. He felt its heart hammer against the ribs, a frantic drumbeat of disbelief and horror. A tidal wave of emotions that were not his own crashed over him: the acid burn of betrayal, the confusion of a loyal soldier given an unthinkable order, and a surge of volcanic anger that threatened to choke him. A single, silent question screamed from the depths of the man's soul, a question that resonated with the core of Akhen's own damned existence: Why?

The vision shattered like a pane of ice dropped from a great height.

Akhen’s eyes snapped open. The divine light was gone, replaced by the dim, flickering dance of a single candle. The pressure in his ears had vanished, leaving only a profound, ringing silence. He was lying on a soft bed, the coarse sheets beneath him a world away from the blood-soaked cobblestones where he remembered collapsing. The air, crisp and cool, smelled of dried herbs—lavender and something sharper, medicinal—and clean linen. He knew, with the weary certainty of a survivor, that this was another vision, a fragment of a past clawing at him from a grave he couldn't locate. Yet the raw emotion of it, the ghost of that righteous fury, clung to him like a shroud.

And then he saw her.

She was sitting in a simple wooden chair beside his bed, asleep. Her head was tilted slightly, resting against the high back of the chair, and a cascade of hair as white as untouched snow spilled over her shoulder, seeming to drink in the candlelight and hold it within its strands. He had seen her before—a fleeting image on a rooftop, a phantom in the haze of poison. The white-haired figure who had watched him fall. But here, in the quiet intimacy of this room, she was less apparition and more impossible art.

Her skin was flawless porcelain, so pale it seemed carved from alabaster. Her face bore sharp, aristocratic angles: a strong jawline, high cheekbones, a nose as straight and elegant as a duelist’s blade. Yet that severity was softened by her lips. They were the only bloom of color in the stark portrait she presented—a deep, natural cherry red, like a perfect berry resting on a field of snow. Hers was not the inviting beauty of a summer meadow, but the breathtaking, lethal beauty of a winter storm. Cold, ethereal, and edged with danger.

Akhen felt a strange calm settle over him as he watched her. The ever-present storm inside him, the rage and pain that fueled his every step, was silenced for the first time in years. It was not gone, merely dormant, held at bay by her serene presence. What a strange girl, he thought, the words softer than any he’d formed in a long, long time.

Acting on an impulse he didn't recognize and couldn't control, he slowly lifted a hand that felt leaden with disuse. His fingers, scarred and calloused, reached out, brushing toward a stray lock of her snow-white hair.

Her eyes snapped open.

They were the color of glacial ice, pale, piercing, and utterly devoid of drowsiness. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, there was a blur of motion. Faster than thought, faster than reflex, cold steel kissed the skin just below his eye. A slim, wicked-looking blade hovered at his pupil, its point aimed with surgical precision. It was held in a grip that was perfectly, unnervingly steady. Even Akhen, the Branded Wanderer who had danced through the blades of twenty assassins in the Ash Plains, had not seen her move.

He didn't feel fear. He felt admiration. The reflex was not one of panic but of pure, lethal instinct. It was magnificent.

His voice was a rasp, broken and dry from disuse. “Why?”

Her icy gaze did not waver. The knife didn't move a fraction of an inch. “Why what?” Her voice was as calm and cool as her eyes.

“Why save me?” His own eyes, dark as chipped obsidian, locked on hers. “Easier to throw me to the wolves. Or finish the job yourself.”

Something flickered in her gaze then—too quick to name, but it was there. Surprise? Curiosity? Then it was gone, her expression once again a mask of flat composure. “I don’t know,” she said, and the stark honesty of the admission startled him more than the knife at his throat. “I just felt like it.”

The corner of Akhen's mouth twitched, pulling his lips into something alien and unfamiliar—half smirk, half smile. It was not a smile of warmth or humor, but of grim, appreciative recognition. The expression of a predator acknowledging another of its kind.

Her arm eased, and with a single, fluid motion she sheathed the blade in a hidden holster on her wrist. Rising gracefully, she walked to the door, her posture radiating a poise that spoke of years of training. Her voice, calm and edged like her blade, drifted back to him. “Your wounds are mostly healed. The poison is neutralized.”

She paused, her back to him, then her wrist flicked. Something dark spun through the air, glinting in the candlelight. Akhen’s hand snapped up, his instincts taking over where his conscious mind was still lagging. He caught the object just before it struck his face. His palm stung sharply, but his fingers closed around the leather-wrapped hilt of a small, perfectly balanced throwing knife.

A low, musical laugh broke the silence. She turned, and for the first time, she smiled. It was a real smile, sharp and dangerous but undeniably alive. The cold statue became a breathtakingly vital woman. “Seeing that,” she said, nodding at the knife in his grip, “I was right.”

“What is wrong with you?” Akhen muttered, his thumb tracing the edge of the blade. It was razor-sharp.

“I just wanted to know what kind of man I dragged out of the gutter,” she replied, her smile turning sly. “A helpless victim—or something worthwhile. Now I know.” She gave him a slight, mocking bow that was somehow more insulting than an overt gesture. “Rose White, only daughter of Grand Duke Raven.”

The name carried weight, resonating in the city's undercurrents of power. Grand Duke Raven was not one of the Five Lords who strangled Solgar, but he was a powerful rival, an old-blood noble who played his own games from the shadows.

“I don’t want an introduction from you,” she added, her eyes glinting with a mischievous light. “I’ll learn who you are for myself. It’s more fun that way.”

Her hand rested on the iron latch of the door, and she glanced over her shoulder one last time, her expression shifting again. The mischief was gone, replaced by something predatory and calculating. “Oh—and don’t worry about the doctor’s fee.” Her smile sharpened, becoming a slash of promise. “This will cost you. Badly.”

The door clicked shut behind her, leaving Akhen alone in the flickering candlelight, the throwing knife still clutched in his hand. The debt she spoke of was not one of coin. He knew that with chilling certainty. It would be a debt of service, of blood, of purpose. And a man like him, a man with nothing left to lose, was the perfect debtor.

That evening, after the last light had faded from the single high window in the room, Akhen forced himself upright. His muscles screamed in protest, and a dull ache throbbed in his side where the poison had done its worst, but the pain was a familiar companion. He dressed in the simple, dark clothes left for him and made his way down a winding stone staircase. He found himself in a small, private hall where a supper had been laid for him on a heavy oak table—bread still warm from the oven, a roasted fowl, and wine too rich and dark for a nameless stranger. Rose White was nowhere to be seen. He ate in silence, each bite tasting faintly of suspicion, each swallow of wine a reminder of his new, unspoken obligation.

When he was done, he stood and walked to the main door of the house—a grand, iron-banded thing. The house was quiet, the shadows long and deep. For a moment, he considered seeking her out, demanding answers. But he knew it would be pointless. She would reveal what she wanted, when she wanted. To stay here was to be a guest, a patient, a pawn. It was to be caged. His freedom, what little he had of it, was his only true possession.

He paused at the door, his hand on the cold iron handle. He inclined his head slightly, a gesture so subtle it was barely a movement, a silent acknowledgment to the empty air. Not quite thanks, but something close to it.

“Rose White,” he murmured, the name a strange weight on his tongue. “I’ll remember the debt.”

Then he stepped out into Solgar’s unforgiving night.

The air was thick with the smells of coal smoke, damp stone, and desperation. The moon was a sliver, hidden behind a shroud of smog, casting the city in a grimy twilight. Akhen pulled the hood of his cloak low and moved with the purpose of a phantom, his feet carrying him through winding, labyrinthine streets. He kept to the shadows, his senses on high alert.

This was the true Solgar, a city built on a foundation of greed. He passed districts that were clearly under the thumb of one of the Five Lords. In one quarter, opulent carriages rattled over the cobblestones, guarded by men wearing the golden sunburst of Lord Valerius, the merchant king. In another, the alleys were patrolled by hulking brutes bearing the mark of the chained hydra—Lord Gorgon’s enforcers, masters of the fighting pits and extortion rackets. The city wasn't just ruled by them; it was carved into fiefdoms. The people scurried from the light, their faces etched with a fear so ingrained it had become a permanent part of their features.

His feet, guided by a memory older than his curse, carried him with steady purpose through the grime and the fear until he reached it: Torvin’s Blade Shop. The same crooked sign, hanging by a single rusty chain, depicted a crossed hammer and sword. The same familiar, comforting glow of forge-fire bled from the grimy windows. It had only been a handful of days since he had first sought entry to Solgar, but standing here now, it felt like a lifetime had passed. He was no longer just a wanderer seeking answers. He was a man with a war to begin.

Akhen pushed open the heavy wooden door. The bell above chimed weakly, a tired, tinny sound, just as he remembered. The wave of heat, the smell of quenching steel and hot coal, washed over him like a long-lost embrace.

And the saga moved forward.