Since the night the fire answered my call since that woman gave me that strange pendant I hadn't been the same.
On the outside, nothing had changed.
The servants still averted their eyes.
Gareth kept up his provocations, convinced that hitting harder was the only way to earn respect.
But inside… I no longer felt that seething hatred. I was no longer that weak Kael. Or rather, that weak Ahzrael.
I had reignited the black flames. Or at least, I had begun to find them again.
But that wasn't enough.
I needed something else.
Muscle. Breath. Raw strength.
Without that, I was just a spirit trapped in a fragile shell.
I needed a master.
But no knight would risk training a despised bastard.
Still every castle has its forgotten ones.
Its shadows.
That's how I heard of a man: Aldrik. A grizzled old weapons master with a gaze like no other. Once a knight, now disgraced, living in self-imposed exile.
A man everyone had forgotten or wanted to forget.
He had once stood among the greatest. His blade had served the crown, his valor had shaken the battlefield.
But one day, he disobeyed a royal order.
They stripped him of his honors, cast him out to the edges of the castle grounds.
Some said he'd defied the king to save innocents. Others claimed his pride had refused to bow.
Now, he lived off scraps, surrounded by barrels of strong wine and obsessed with a strange board game: Siege of the Bastion.
A game of strategy. No dice. No luck. Two players, two armies. The goal: capture the three central bastions by crushing or outmaneuvering your opponent.
Some played for hours.
He played every night, his eyes dulled by smoke and drink.
I watched him for days.
Aldrik was a broken colossus. A giant worn by war, his body still powerful beneath the weight of exhaustion.
His beard was thick, unkempt. Tangled hair fell across a jagged scar that split his forehead a blow that should've ended him.
His right eye was hidden beneath a strip of black leather.
The other a cold, pale gray seemed to cut through gestures and lies alike.
But most of all, it was his hands…
Large, gnarled, with thickened knuckles and skin tough as old leather yet precise, almost delicate, when they moved the game pieces.
Each night, he played alone, muttering, dragging his fingers across the board with the slow certainty of a man worn thin but never careless.
One evening, as the shadows stretched long across the stone, I approached.
He was playing again, fingers stained with ink and wine.
I found him slumped against the wall, an empty bottle curled in his hand. His eyes had that hollow look of an old wolf too tired to howl at the moon.
I moved closer, silent.
"What do you want?" he growled, without even looking up.
I didn't answer right away. I studied the lines on his face, the scar across his wrinkled forehead.
"I want you to be my master. To train me. To teach me your techniques."
"No thanks, kid. I've given enough."
His voice was hoarse, soaked in liquor and regret.
"Do you like your life?" I asked, coldly.
He raised an eyebrow.
"I've got my bottle, my game, and peace. That's all I need. War, orders, fighting… I spit on it all."
He gave a bitter laugh.
"Find yourself another fool. I've got nothing to teach."
I didn't budge an inch.
"I don't want someone who avoids my eyes, or talks to me out of fear. I want someone who'll break my bones until I'm tougher than steel."
He burst out laughing, a twisted grin warping his face.
"And why the hell would I do that? Out of kindness? I've got none left. That's not my world anymore. I'm an old wolf who knows biting does no good."
I stared him dead in the eye.
"I think you still care."
He paused, intrigued.
"Oh? And what makes you think that, little raven?"
"Maybe you don't fight anymore, but you still have your game."
I gestured to the rough table where the game pieces lay.
"You play every night. Not for victory. Just to forget you're still alive."
A tense silence fell between us.
He stared at me, his single eye glinting with something sharp and dark.
"You've got some nerve for a whelp."
I gave a thin, humorless smile.
"Here's my offer. If I win a game you train me."
He barked a laugh, breaking into a wheezing cough.
"And what's in it for me? I may be a bastard, but I don't waste time without a prize."
I stepped closer, locking my gaze with his.
"If I lose, I become your slave."
He blinked, taken aback.
"My slave, huh? That's a new one..."
I didn't flinch.
"Every night. Without fail. I come here. I play with you. I pour your drinks, I listen to your rambling, I do whatever you say. Whether you like me or not, I'll be here. Obedient. Quiet. Yours. For the rest of my miserable life, if that's what it takes."
Silence fell like an axe.
Then he laughed again dark, guttural, almost unhinged.
"By all the devils… You're either mad, desperate, or both."
"Honestly… not much different from what I already endure in this castle."
He stared long and hard, then flashed a predatory grin.
"You've got some balls, little raven. Fine. One game."
He lined up the pieces. That eye of his gleamed with something wild.
"But if I win you're mine. My shadow. My errand boy. My punching bag, if I feel like it."
I answered in a calm, flat voice:
"Deal."
He ran me through the rules quickly.
Then he let me start.
I had never played before.
But I understood. Instinctively.
Each piece, each path, every line was a battlefield. Attack angles, weak points, reinforcements.
I didn't need rules.
It was… natural.
I moved my pieces without hesitation.
Just like I used to, in that other life when I led my legions.
At first, Aldrik looked amused.
Then his frown deepened with every turn.
He countered but too slowly.
I pressed forward, cut off his lines, surrounded the bastions.
His gaze hardened.
An hour passed.
He had nothing left.
I placed my final piece, closing every escape.
Silence.
Long. Heavy.
Then he sighed like twenty years of solitude collapsed all at once.
"Who… taught you this?" he whispered, almost afraid.
I looked up at him.
"No one."
He stared at me for a long time, and then his lips curled into a strange smile.
A blend of defeat, amusement… and something like respect.
— "Well then, raven. I lost."
He stood, stepped closer, and his lone eye pierced through me.
"I'll train you. But listen carefully no complaints, no crying, no rest. I will break your body. If you survive, good. If you die, too bad."
I didn't flinch.
His voice dropped low sharp as a blade, tinged with something like sorrow:
"I won't make the same mistake twice. I won't train you to be a knight. I'll forge you into a weapon. One that bows to no one."
A smile crept across my lips.
That was all I needed.
In the shadows, the masks began to fall.
And the dawn of my true rise had just begun.