Arrin stared at the grey ceiling and held his gaze there. He did not dare to look at the shadowed men, the hearth’s fire dying down to a resentful smolder. His lip and especially his tongue throbbed with pain at the slightest of movements. Pain. It was something he had grown to meet, but never fully accepted.

His father had never been the one to hit him. It would always be some lout in sparring, some boy always bigger than him, his father made sure of it. And every time he fell and writhed from the pain, he heard his father’s words, Be better. Be anything better than… this.

One day Arrin had acted meek, holding his sword arm as if it were broken. The lout who had hit him grinned and stepped forward. His father always made sure it was some troublemaking peasant boy with a penchant for violence, taken here instead of being flogged. These are your people. What will you do when they put their heel against your throat?

Arrin had cried out, “Please. Please…”

The boy stepped closer. He was tall, almost as tall as Theod, who had watched grim faced next to his father. The boy raised his wooden sword. Blunted, yes. But the pain they brandished was heavy with its agony.

Arrin stabbed then at the boy’s groin, between his legs. The boy howled, collapsing, and knelt before Arrin.

His father held the stoned railing above, knuckles white from his grip.

“End it!” he snapped. “Before I send another to face you.”

Arrin raised his sword. This time the boy stared up at him whimpering, “Please. I was just going to-”

Arrin smashed the flat of his training sword against one side of his face, contorting, head twisting to land upon the muddied earth. Blood spattered over his sword, Arrin dropped it and knelt in turn, weeping and wracked in broken gasps.

He heard his father, “Better. Anything is better than being the latter. Whatever you must do, no matter the cost. Remember that, Arrin.”

Was this what you were preparing me for, father? Arrin thought. What must I do to escape?

All his life he had been held within the Circle, a fortress of unfeeling stone not quite as cold as his father. The Arch King was relentless in his tutelage, his demands only possible through tortuous failure.

He was held in that seeming monolith for his own protection, until his Ascension, when he would come of age and his Mage powers would develop at his eighteenth span, his Craft and Conduit divined by the Mage Order.

Arrin's true guardian had been Theod, always dusting off his bruised shoulders from one of father's harsher lessons, ferrying him to escape from the cold castle when his father was needed elsewhere from the capital. Now Theod was dead, cut so easily down by one of such shadowed men who stood mere feet away from his cot.

Metal creaked, the barred door opened, and Ambrose stepped past. His bleached uniform was immaculate as before, white gloves stretched tight over his hands. He sat at the table, at the room’s center. He gestured to the remaining chair. Arrin sat down, facing Ambrose.

“The Arch King has taken a Minister of Dres Lanieth,” Ambrose spoke as if he were caught in mundane discussion. “No man could have done such a deed alone. Only one man comes to mind, for all agree he is a man. The man that propped the Arch King to his throne. The Kingmaker.” He waved a colorless hand. “Even you have heard of him. Surely you have played being him, acted out the tales of his heroics. The Forest Crusades. The Haolan Invasion. The Reunification. What makes him different from Jophen the Gallant, or Brixos the Fierce, is his birthright. And his birthright is nothing,” Ambrose whispered fiercely. “Mortalborn, nothing more. But his strength is not in his cunning or his skill. It is his powerlessness, that his foes would underestimate a man born of no innate might, no Craft, no glory. No name. Just an unassuming man.” Ambrose pulled off his gloves, setting them flat on the table.

The shadowed men tread towards Arrin, holding him down by each arm. Their hands were pincers, inescapable in their iron hard grasp.

“What are you doing?” Arrin slurred from his still wounded tongue.

“Calm down, Arrin,” Ambrose spoke. “The process will take longer should you resist.” The Minister stood up, dragging the chair with one hand to fall next to him. He sat once more upon the chair, curling his bare fingers into claws that gripped Arrin’s face. Ambrose’s lips twisted into a smile. Arrin shuddered and screamed as a jagged point of pain bled through his mind. The Minister’s hands held his thrashing face.

“You are… a Mage...” Arrin wheezed. “But you are… a rebel.”

“You have an uncanny amount of will for one so young,” Ambrose said. “Close your eyes, lest I gouge them out, Arrin.”

He shut his eyes, the pain magnified to a wound pouring into a prison that sieged his mind, confining and crushing him in its inextricable embrace.

“I want you to know,” Ambrose murmured through the darkness. “That all your memories, all your secrets are known to me. You are being stripped bare, powerless and taken of one’s most prized possession: your entire being.”

Arrin screamed again, not from the pain more excruciating than anything he could possibly feel, but from the perversion of his own mind being taken from him. His closed vision colored into memory, something not his own, but familiar just the same.

Arrin’s vision cleared to the sharp flare of sunlight. He was a boy, Arrin was sure of that. His hunger was heightened to such a degree that smell became taste, and the smell reeked of rotting things better left untouched. Rafters holding up holed burlap strangled the sunlight falling down the narrow dirt streets.

It was a hot sticky day. The boy, whoever Arrin saw through, was padding down a dark alley and rapped onto a wooden door. Three knocks, and not one more. The metal shutter slid open and bloodshot eyes peeked out. The shutter clanged shut. Several locks rattled away, and the door opened.

Behind stood a bearded man, sword by his hip, waving for him to move along. He stank of sour ale and drowned decency.

“Another prize to add to Jao’s collection, prince of thieves?” the man grinned.

“He’d add your head too, Hira,” the boy said also in Haolo, yet Arrin understood every word. “Should he know you’d been drinking before watch.”

Hira belched, “Perhaps. Jao means to speak with you. He’s been waiting not soon after you left.”

The boy froze for an instant, a chill reaching the nape of his neck despite the sweltering heat. He hurried past the hall, Hira calling out, “Perhaps Jao will have your head before mine, gutterprince!”

The boy reached another door, the two Jinnto, ruthless rogues in Haolo, opening it without preamble. The rusted door clanged shut behind him.

Inside was a circled black iron chandelier overhead holding brimming candles. The faint glow showed a group of men and women, five in total, who turned to appraise him. They were all hooded and cloaked in dark cloth that seemed to consume the casting light. Arrin felt the boy’s fear, melting ice that crept through his blood.

The boy knew the gaunt man standing behind the desk stacked with papers, Jao, who smiled at his approach.

“Thael. I’d like you to meet this group of genteel men and women,” Jao waved a slender hand glimmering with gold rings.

“Tainted blood, Jao,” one hooded man cursed in grumbling Cadish. “He’s just a boy.”

“This boy is the best lockpicker I have to offer, and willing to take the job for your particular allegiance,” Jao replied. “He is the only aid I can offer you.”

“Only aid you can offer, or only aid you choose to give?” the hooded man accused.

Jao gave a hollowed smile. “Do you have what I asked for, Thael?”

The boy, Thael, nodded, producing a black iron key from one pocket, cold and heavy in his thin fingers.

“Young Thael here has brought us a skeleton key belonging to a certain Steward.” Jao continued. “He will guide you to what you seek.”

“If that key is what you claim it is, then give it and we shall be on our way,” said the hooded man.

Jao tutted in Haolo, “The arrogance of these people Thael. I would leave their bodies floating in the sewers if it did not start a war with their Empire.” He resumed in Cadish, “Thael is your best hope of getting through the vault. I want what you want, believe me.” Jao poured crimson wax upon a letter and stamped a seal, steam sifting out from the molten wax. “This forgery will let you through. Whatever business you find yourself in after is up to you.”

The man swiped the proffered letter. “Should we not return, my Order will come back for you, Jao.”

Jao returned a tight lipped smile, “I would expect nothing less.”

“You, boy.” The man exited the room, the others falling behind in double file. “Follow me.”

Arrin’s sight returned to his own, shrieking as the pain in his mind returned as well, prodding and slicing in his head. Ambrose’s mouth bared a feral snarl as his iron fingers dug into his face. “I see what you see, Arrin,” the Minister grinned. “The Arch King, a gutter rat? No, he grew up a highborn! You will reveal your origins to me, boy.”

Arrin whimpered, the pain unnatural, such was its strength, and he was brought once more into Thael’s eyes.

The cloaked men and women moved with a casual quiet that had taken Thael years to learn and yet master. Whereas he crept with a soft step they strode with a predatory silence, dark cloaks gliding past the ground, darker than even the night.

Their leader had warned the boy Thael, “Stay where we tell you. Move where we tell you.”

They had entered the building of stone and mortar not through the front gate but clambered up its walls. One man, broad as a door, propped each of them up. Another man unrolled a roped ladder made up of wooden boards from his pack, dangling over the wall for the remaining man to climb. Whoever these men and women were, they were well prepared, and moved with a relaxed confidence despite breaking into the bank of the Ministers.

Dres Lanieth was an outlawed kingdom, one governed by its Ministers that commanded the kingdom’s legions. To interrupt the Ministers’ sway over their soldiers, the coin hoarded in this bank, was to declare war on Dres Lanieth; should you be caught.

He was in his element at night. To remain unseen, and strike first and if fortunate last. These men and women recognized this as well. They had killed, and killed many at that, Thael knew this. It seemed one’s true nature was revealed in the moment they killed or died. Thael knew he was no killer. Yet he killed just the same. These people made killing seem a mundane task, such was their ease, as if they only had one choice given.

Thael squinted to where he heard the soft grunts and death rattles of the fallen guards they had slain. The dark seemed to harbor each of them in their cloaks. It must be their cloaks, he realized, at least a part in their unnatural stealth. What magics did these people possess? Were they Mages? For the guards had been killed outside their reach. But Mages were only thought to be in the Monarchy. Why would descendants of gods choose to use their power on mortalborn?

“Follow me, boy.” Their leader strode to the door leading down to the bank. It was a small castle in the Ring, the central district where Thael had made his marks as a thief… and killer if need be. Jao had started to send him on jobs that ended that way. He had never bothered to remember their faces; just the one, the first, his blue eyes still staring back at him whenever Thael closed his own for long enough…

“Wait here,” the man said. The others shadowed him, blades blackened with blood in hand. Propped torches dimmed the corridors. Thael waited a moment, then followed, peeking past for which corner they turned to.

They entered a long room, the guards’ quarters. Men slept in their cots, one bed atop another. The cloaked men and women swept past, separating to either side. Each killed a sleeping man by twisting their dagger into his neck whilst smothering his mouth. Their death rattles wheezed into the room. A man stirred and raised himself groggily awake.

One woman flicked out her dagger that arced in the air to stab into his throat. The man fell onto the stone floor with a hard slap. How could the dagger have moved in such a way? Thael knew that was no natural action. They were Mages, the woman at least. Thael had heard the stories. Of the Monarchy bending the natural ways of this world to their own will, capable of deeds no mortalborn could do otherwise. Arrin could feel Thael’s thoughts, his fear growing from his belly to his tightening chest.

The men and women retreated into the shadows of the room cast by the lonesome lantern outside the open hall. Thael lost sight of them. Men were now awake from the other dying man, staring at his struggling as he gagged trying to speak. A puddle of black spread onto the floor, and the man collapsed. Thael ducked behind the wall, away from their eyes.

“Wake up!” a man roared. “We’re being attack-” screams ended with grunts and wet sounds of what he knew was flesh being slabbed and rent apart.

A man burst out from the room, blood trickling down one arm. His shoulder collided against the wall in his desperate escape. Thael did not hesitate, drawing out his own dagger and jumping onto the man’s back, stabbing his neck repeatedly while clinging to him with his other limbs. A man could take many a shallow wound to his chest, but it would take just one well placed blade to his neck.

The man lurched back, slamming him against the stone wall. A flash of pain wracked through Arrin’s vision. Thael kept stabbing his neck, his face, the dagger squelching into the man’s eye socket. The man sagged to the floor, crushing him between the wall. Thael scrambled off his corpse, crawled away and looked up to find the shadowed people watching him, quiet. Behind them lay dozens of men now still and silent.

“Get your dagger,” their leader gestured to the dead man slumped against the wall beside Thael, head nodded down as if he were asleep, save for the dagger jutting out his leaking eye. “You still may have need of it.”

Thael pulled the blade free, clear liquid traced with blood trickling from the man’s eye. He followed them down the hall. They moved near the shadows, no, the shadows moved with them in such a manner guards peered into the dark before they were swiftly cut down in quiet work. There were no screams, only blood. Thael stayed where he was told, never seeing their efficient murder, only the corpses afterward, mouths still agape.

They strode down a stairwell and reached the end of a short tunnel, wide enough for three large men to walk shoulder to shoulder. Less than a dozen guards armed with sword and shield stood between the narrow pass and the wide metal door behind them. They balked at the encroaching darkness dimming the torches upon the walls as the shadowed Mages tread forward. The guards pressed into a shield wall, armor clunking with their hurried movement. Thael remained at the tunnel’s entrance, the Mages slipping past. The torchlight then died. Thael wondered what it would be like to see but a shadow of a gangly boy before the last hope of light extinguished before you.

“It’s death come to take us,” he heard one man whimper.

“Hold formation,” their leader snarled. “Death will only take caitiffs such as yourself.”

The screams began, sparks of clashing steel with grunts and curses. The torches fluttered back to flames. The men lay as the ones before, broken and still and very much dead. One hooded man had fallen with them.

“Fucking judgement,” hissed a shadowed woman who knelt beside. “Raen’s dead.”

“He knew this life,” their leader said softly.

“So will he be forgotten,” they intoned together. “So will he be free.”

One man, the largest of them, unshouldered his pack and hefted out a small barrel. Thael had seen Jao smuggle such things, and knew what was inside, the substance known as firedust. He had witnessed what a pinch of firedust touched with flame could do to a man, at least the remainder.

“Open the door, boy,” their leader nodded his cowled head to the metal door, barred with a padlock larger than Thael’s hand.

“Who was their boss?” Thael asked.

The hooded leader gestured to the largest man who for all his size and strength was now the same as the rest. Death seemed the grand justice of everything then to Thael, and it would be the greatest evil to kill death itself.

He pulled off the dead man’s boot, nose wrinkling at the sudden stench, and cut the boot by its brown leathered ankle. A lined pocket stitched inside revealed a large key.

“Smart boy,” a shadowed woman remarked. “But what about your special key?”

“No skeleton key could open every door, least of all the Kingdom’s vault,” he replied calmly.

Thael stepped over the corpses strewn about as ragdolls he once played beside in his life before, twisting the key into the padlock and wresting it free.

The man wide as a door pulled the even larger door open, metal squealing with heavy protest. Behind it all were boxes evenly stacked up to Thael’s chest. The man pried one box apart with his dagger. Inside, even in the faint light, glinted the brilliance of the gold coin that filled it. These people would destroy the life blood of the Ministers with utter ease, Thael thought.

The large man carried the barrel of firedust into the vault, a shadowed woman prying out its top and spread a long thinning rope from the tunnel into the barrel.

She nodded to their leader, “It’s set.”

He spoke with crisp candor, “Let’s move, Wraiths.” The woman took a torch held from a wall and lowered it to the rope.

Wraiths. Men and women never seen, only found in whispers. Whispered to ride atop the wrynn, giant birds less fearsome only to their riders. And Wraiths were heard to serve only the Empire, the Arch Queen herself. They were human, but something more to their foes. Bringers of death, so certain when they came that they were no killers. They were heralds of death itself, so he had listened to Jao's Jinnto. Thael was not sure what heralds meant, but he had reckoned that it meant more than any King, or Arch Queen for that matter. Even the Arch Queen had to die, no matter how many centuries she had left.

The Wraiths strode with a brisk step back from whence they came, deceptive in their casual speed, Thael hurrying behind. The shadows thwarted him, and Thael lost them, but he knew his way down such halls and corridors, remembering their path. He rushed past, scraping against the stone walls in his momentum, but he did not falter. He saw them now, finding where the moonlight did not touch the walls. They were now visible to him as he stepped closer.

One woman said, “What should we do with the boy, Osbern?”

“How old are you, Thael?” their shadowed leader, Osbern, asked, using his name instead of boy.

“Fourteen.”

“He’s too old,” the woman quipped.

“He’s young enough,” Osbern replied. “He made it this far. Raen’s dead, there’s a seat for him. The Order remains whole in the end.”

It seemed his answer settled the matter, as the woman fell silent. Their leader held a whistle round his neck and blew upon it. No sound escaped.

Thael looked up to the half veiled moon in expectation.

“Will I be a Wraith?”

Osbern paused. “Perhaps.”

The giant wingspan of the wrynn’s dark figure dove past the moon. They heard its wings buffeting the air, such was its size. Arrin felt Thael’s mouth half open in awe.

The wrynn hovered above them, great wings beating ever faster, basking them in its shadow. A roped ladder fell to them. The Wraiths climbed up, and a resounding boom echoed throughout the city. Thael heard yells of men, many of them fast approaching. Osbern was last to take the ladder, lowering his hand out to Thael.

He grabbed it, Osbern's firm grasp pulling him up.

Arrin’s vision flashed to darkness, hearing Ambrose’s faint voice, “A pity…