Kael had never believed in heroes, not even when he was young and naïve enough to hope the world would fix itself, not even when the System arrived and everyone said it would change things for the better. He had grown up in the lower ring of Velhara, where poverty looked normal and silence was safer than curiosity. His mother had died during a system assessment, his father taken the following year for questioning the judge's allocation.
By the time Kael was fifteen, he'd learned to keep his head down and his voice lower, but keeping quiet didn't feel like living, and he didn't want to rot in a city that killed people for telling the truth, so when he got the job at the mayor's estate, he saw it as a way to make things better.
Kael was twenty-six when they killed him. He had served as a palace worker for nearly eight years, loyal, punctual, and quiet until the day he found the sealed documents—records showing the mayor had been funneling resources meant for the system trials into private vaults, that his son had failed the eligibility tests but still gained level rights, that entire families in the lower district had been marked unfit without ever being evaluated. Kael didn't steal those documents to make noise; he gave them directly to the System envoys, believing justice would follow.
But justice didn't come.
The next morning, he was summoned to the east chamber, the mayor's personal court, an area most workers never stepped into. He went alone, thinking maybe he'd be thanked, maybe promoted, maybe transferred somewhere safer. He stood before Mayor Darion Ardent, a tall man with a lean build and sharp cheekbones, a face that never smiled in private, wearing black embroidered robes with the silver crest of judgment pinned to his shoulder, his gray eyes cold even when he offered wine.
The mayor's son, Sirian, stood by the door, arms folded, dressed in half-armor like he expected war inside his own home. Sirian was younger than Kael by two years, known for arrogance, blessed with privileges the system should have stripped from him, and his hatred for Kael had always been clear.
Kael didn't drink the wine. He asked why he'd been summoned. The mayor only said one word.."liar."
Sirian crossed the room in seconds. Kael had no time to defend himself. No time to plead. The blade that sliced through his neck was ceremonial, curved and polished, used for sentencing criminals who betrayed the system. His blood hit the marble floor in a single, heavy stream. His body hit next. No trial. No chance to explain.
The guards dumped his corpse in the Forgotten Grounds by nightfall.
The next morning, Nyra found out.
Nyra had always been smaller than her brother, lean and quick, with sun-burnt skin and dark eyes that read every face she met like a warning. She worked in the lower district as a supplier for system-approved herbs and low-grade potions, nothing powerful enough to draw attention. After their parents died, it was Kael who kept her alive, Kael who taught her to stay hidden, to never question the wrong people, to pretend obedience. But Kael had broken that rule, and now he was gone.
When she saw his body, already headless, thrown among garbage in the slums she'd once escaped, something in her shattered. She didn't scream nor did she cry. She covered him with her cloak and buried what was left beneath the old shrine tree on the outskirts. No priest. No rites. Just soil and silence.
She went home. She didn't speak for hours. Then she sharpened a dagger.
Nyra knew the mayor would never be punished. The System had judged her brother guilty without even blinking, and the people, those who whispered about justice had stayed quiet the moment they saw Sirian Ardent walking free with blood still on his boots.
She waited four nights.
She studied every patrol, every servant's route, mapped out the narrowest corners of the estate until she found a path to the side tower. It would take time. She would need to climb the outer gate, slip past the food couriers at dawn, crawl through the drainage tunnel beneath the rose hall. She knew where Sirian slept. She had cleaned that room once, seen the gold-etched walls and his favorite blade mounted above the bed, the same one used on Kael.
She reached the estate before sunrise. She wore servant robes she'd stolen from a washline, her face dirtied, her cloak tattered. No one looked at her. No one asked questions. They were all afraid of the same thing. The mayor's wrath.
She entered through the supply gate. She moved like she belonged. When a guard asked her name, she mumbled "Elya," the name of a dead girl who'd worked there once. It was enough.
The corridors felt colder than she remembered. The walls were too clean. The silence too deep.
She reached the east wing without being stopped. The door to Sirian's room stood open, just slightly, as if he'd been expecting something. Nyra stepped inside, her fingers clenched tight around the dagger.
But she didn't see him.
Not until the door slammed shut behind her.
Sirian had been hiding in the shadows, waiting like a wolf.
He didn't ask her name. He didn't need to. He drove his blade forward with the same precision he'd used on her brother. She felt it tear through her side, not once but twice, and when she staggered, he grabbed her by the neck and threw her against the wall.
Her vision blurred. Her breath wouldn't come.
He stepped close and whispered in her ear, "Traitors die twice."
Then he drove the blade in one last time.
She collapsed, her body sliding to the floor in a pool of her own blood, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling that shimmered with holy sigils, wondering why the System never stopped him, why it allowed this again.
The last thing she saw was his face, untouched by remorse.
And then, everything went dark. But something wasn't finished with her. Something ancient opened its eyes beneath the earth.