I was born in the dead of winter.
Saint Petersburg, on a night when the wind howled so violently it felt like the world itself was trying to erase me before I even drew my first breath. My mother told me once—before her voice became one more silence in the house—that the streetlamps flickered against the snow, making the flakes dance like shards of broken glass. The power had gone out in half the city. Only candles lit the small flat where I entered the world, more shadow than warmth.
My father, Sergei Sidorov, didn't hold me. He didn't even look at me the way other men look at their sons. He studied me like one might study a weapon newly forged—checking for flaws, calculating what could be sharpened. His first words to me weren't a blessing. They were an order. "He will stand." I was still red-faced and screaming in my mother's arms, but in his mind, I was already walking, already fighting, already carrying his legacy.
My grandfather was the only one who offered softness. He smelled of smoke and oil and always carried a small knife at his hip. At night, when Sergei's back was turned, he would whittle scraps of pine into crude swords and daggers for me. He never called them toys. "Tools," he'd say, sliding one into my hand when I was barely old enough to keep my fingers around it. "Learn the weight now. The balance comes later." His stories were no fairy tales. They were war memories—snipers on the Volga, comrades who never came back. They were meant to harden me, not comfort me. But I clung to them anyway.
By age four, the games ended. My father began what he called "conditioning." Cold exposure first. I remember standing barefoot in snow so deep it swallowed my ankles, shivering until my jaw ached. He would time me with an old brass stopwatch, never looking away, as if my body might betray him by collapsing. If I cried, he started the timer over. If I endured in silence, he simply clicked the watch shut and walked inside, leaving me alone in the frost. That silence was the closest I ever got to praise.
Then came breath control. Long nights where I was forced to submerge my face in buckets of ice water, holding as long as possible while his hand pressed firmly against the back of my head. If I panicked and lifted early, I was forced to do it again, longer. If I blacked out, he said I was learning.
Balance drills followed. Tape lines across the floor, narrow as razor edges, where I had to walk silently with a glass of water on my head. At first, I spilled constantly. The slap of his belt across my back was sharp and final each time. Eventually, I learned stillness. My spine straight as steel, steps soft enough to fool even my own ears.
At seven, wood turned to steel. My grandfather placed the last of his whittled blades into a drawer and locked it, never speaking of them again. My father set a real knife in my palm—a military-issue combat blade, the steel dark and heavy. "This," he said, "is your inheritance."
I still remember the smell of oil on the blade, the weight of inevitability in my hand.
The first lesson: grips. Forward grip for aggression, reverse for deception. He forced me to practice transitions until my knuckles blistered and split. Every slip of the blade meant starting over from scratch, no matter how raw my skin became.
Then firearms. A disassembled pistol laid across the kitchen table. He switched off the lights, leaving only the weak glow from a streetlamp outside. "Assemble." My small hands fumbled over the cold metal, but his voice cut like a whip: "Faster. Faster. Your enemy will not wait."
I learned by sound, by touch. The click of a slide locking, the scrape of a pin seating. My body memorized what my eyes couldn't see. By the time I could reassemble the weapon blindfolded, he added the next challenge: field-stripping rifles under the same conditions.
Sparring came after. Not playful, not safe. Older trainees, brought in from somewhere else. Their eyes already flat, like dogs taught too often with the stick. At first, I lost. Again and again. Their fists split my lips, their kicks drove the air from my lungs. But pain was expected. Pain was education.
And then came the first real moment where I changed.
One boy—a year or two older, smug in his strength—kept taunting me. He thought it was a game. I was smaller, weaker, and easy to humiliate. My father watched from the corner, arms folded, eyes like stone.
The boy lunged for me again, confident. But something shifted inside me. The drills, the hours of repetition, the weight of every bruise—they all crystallized in that second. I pivoted off my back heel, turned his momentum past me, and snapped my forearm into his strike to jam it. He staggered. Instinct took over. I spiked my elbow down across his clavicle, hard enough to send him crashing to the mat with a sickening crack.
I didn't stop. I climbed onto him, knee on his chest, my hand crushing his throat. I remember his eyes—wide, terrified, the game suddenly no longer a game.
And that's when my father's hand seized my shoulder, ripping me back. His voice was calm. Almost approving. "Control the finish."
The boy lay wheezing on the mat, his face a mix of shock and betrayal. He hadn't expected me to fight like that. Neither had I.
For the first time, I saw something flicker in Sergei's eyes. Not pride, not love—never love—but recognition. Like a craftsman realizing the weapon he forged could finally cut.
From that day forward, the boy avoided me. And I began to understand: in my father's world, mercy was weakness. Control was power. And I was expected to master both.
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By the time I was nine, childhood had been burned out of me.
My classmates at the local school—what few days I was allowed to attend—still played soccer in the cracked courtyards, their laughter echoing between the old apartment blocks. I never joined them. My bruises were different. My silences heavier. I wasn't there to be a child. I was there to learn how to disappear into crowds, to study faces, to hear accents. Everything was a lesson, even when I sat at a desk scratching out numbers.
At home, the training grew harsher.
My father pushed survival above all else. He'd drag me into the woods outside the city in the dead of winter, hand me nothing but a knife, and leave me. "Three days," he'd say, as if it were a grocery list. "If you return, you've earned the right to eat."
The first time nearly killed me. My hands froze until the skin split, red against the snow. I tried to dig into the bark of trees for sap, chewed bitter pine needles to keep my stomach from cramping. At night, the cold crawled into my bones, making sleep impossible. I made a shelter out of broken branches and half-buried myself under snow, teeth chattering so loud I swore predators would hear me.
But I lived.
By the second trial, I was smarter. I tracked a rabbit in the snow, set a crude snare with cord stripped from my bootlace, and slit its throat with my knife when it struggled. The warmth of its blood steaming against the snow was the first time I understood what survival meant. It wasn't about comfort. It was about killing before you became the one killed.
When I dragged the half-charred carcass back home, my father didn't praise me. He simply glanced at the meat, nodded once, and told me to clean my blade. Approval from him was never spoken. It was absence of disappointment.
At ten, stealth became my obsession. My grandfather would take me into the crumbling factories on the edge of the city. Rusted pipes, shattered windows, glass crunching underfoot. "Move like smoke," he'd whisper. "If I hear you, you're dead." He would stalk me through the darkness, boots heavy, blade in hand, forcing me to slip between shadows, crawl through broken ducts, and climb rusted scaffolding without sound. The thrill of it was sharp—predator and prey, roles shifting every moment.
One night, I managed to circle behind him. My heart hammered in my chest, the knife slick in my palm. I placed the dull edge against his back. His laugh was low, proud. "Good," he said. "Now, do it again. And faster."
But my father was not impressed by games. He wanted results measured in pain.
That same year, he brought me back to the gym where the older trainees waited. They were no longer just boys—they were budding fighters, lean muscle over bone, with scars already across their knuckles.
I remember the smell of chalk and sweat that night. My father's voice was flat. "You will not leave this ring until you put one down."
The first fight was brutal. My opponent was taller, heavier. He came at me like a hammer, fists swinging wide. The first blow cracked across my jaw, spinning my vision white. I staggered, but instinct kept my feet moving. I ducked under his second swing, felt the air rush over my head, and drove my knee into his gut.
He grunted, stumbled, but recovered too quickly. His elbow slammed into the back of my neck, dropping me to one knee. The mat burned my skin as I rolled, narrowly dodging the kick that would've cracked my ribs. My lungs screamed for air. Every part of me begged to quit.
But my father's eyes bore into me from the corner. Stone. Unforgiving.
I surged back, snapping my head upward, catching the boy under the chin with my skull. His teeth clacked hard enough that blood sprayed from his mouth. He reeled, dazed. I didn't hesitate. I hooked his ankle with my foot, drove my shoulder into his chest, and we crashed down together. My small fists hammered his face—one, two, three—until his arms went slack.
Silence hung in the air, broken only by his ragged breath and the drip of blood from my knuckles.
That was the first time I realized something: I didn't need to be bigger, or stronger. I needed to be relentless.
The second fight came minutes later. No rest. A taller boy, sharper eyes, smarter. He circled me, testing, looking for weakness. I mirrored him, knife drills running through my head though we fought barehanded. He struck first—a feint high, then a sweep low. My ankle buckled and I hit the mat hard, pain flaring up my side.
But I remembered my grandfather's lesson: move like smoke. I rolled, slid past his next strike, and came up inside his guard. My forehead smashed into his nose. Cartilage cracked. Blood gushed instantly. Before he could recover, I seized his wrist, twisted until his scream filled the gym, and drove my elbow into his sternum.
He crumpled.
I stood over him, chest heaving, eyes locked on my father. Waiting.
For the first time, he gave me words that weren't orders. "Better." Just that. A single word, but it settled deep in my bones.
By eleven, the drills turned deadly. My father introduced blades into the sparring sessions. Dull at first, edges blunted—but not enough to be safe. Cuts were common. Scars built up along my forearms, my palms, even my ribs where steel kissed skin too close.
He made me fight two at once.
The first time, I failed. A slash opened my thigh, sending me sprawling. The second boy pinned me and pressed the blunt knife to my throat. My father's silence after that failure was worse than any beating.
So I adapted. I learned to use the first attacker as a shield, pivoting behind him, shoving him into his partner's strikes. I learned to slash at arms, not torsos—disable, not finish—until I could isolate one target at a time. My movements grew sharper, my breathing calmer. Each fight became less chaos, more calculation.
The older boys stopped underestimating me. They started fearing me.
And that was when my father decided I was ready for "the trial."
I didn't know what that meant. Only that his tone carried weight. My grandfather didn't speak to me for days beforehand. When I asked why, he only muttered, "Because after this, you won't be a boy anymore."
He was right.
The night before the trial, I sharpened my knife under a single flickering bulb. Each drag of steel on stone sang in the silence. I felt no excitement. No fear. Only a steady readiness, like standing on the edge of a storm.
Tomorrow, I would find out what I really was.
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The train yard smelled of rust and coal.
That's the first thing I remember. The air was thick, metallic, clinging to the back of my throat with every breath. Rows of dead railcars loomed around me, hulks of steel left to rot under a broken moon. Shadows stretched long between them, cut by beams of pale light from flickering lamps.
My father had given me nothing but a knife. "You will not come back until you prove you deserve to," he said. No food. No shelter. No compass. Just me, twelve years old, standing among the carcasses of trains that hadn't run in decades.
The silence here was wrong. No engines, no workers, just the groan of old metal cooling in the night. I felt watched. Hunted.
The first sound came sharp: the scrape of a boot against gravel. Too close.
I spun, knife raised, eyes scanning the shadows between railcars. A figure darted out, low and fast. He was older—fifteen, maybe sixteen—stronger, heavier. His blade slashed wide. I twisted back, steel slicing through my jacket, grazing skin. Pain flared hot.
Instinct drowned out fear. I struck back, knife flashing in the weak light. He ducked, but my blade caught his forearm, opening flesh. His grunt echoed between the cars, bouncing off iron walls.
That was when the second one slammed into me from behind. My chest hit gravel, sharp stones biting into skin as air burst from my lungs. The weight crushed me, his knife pressing down toward my throat. Panic surged. I twisted, bit down hard on his wrist. The taste of blood filled my mouth.
He screamed, grip loosening. I rolled, desperate, knife jerking upward. Steel cut deep. Blood sprayed across my face, hot against the night air. His scream cut off into choking silence.
My first real cut. My first real kill.
I froze—just for a heartbeat. His body twitched, blood soaking into gravel.
The first boy slammed into me again. His fist cracked against my jaw, snapping my head sideways. Pain burst white-hot. I staggered, nearly dropped my knife, slick now with blood.
He pressed in hard, fists and steel raining down. The clang of his strikes rang off a nearby car. I blocked with my forearms, skin splitting, bones shuddering under each blow. One punch buried itself in my gut. I doubled, breath gone.
Move like smoke. My grandfather's voice in my head.
I dropped low. His blade cut air above me. My knife punched up, sliding under his ribs. His mouth opened in shock, a wet gasp. I twisted, ripped free, then slashed across his throat in a single brutal sweep.
Blood fountained, spraying against a rusted railcar.
He staggered, clutching his neck, then fell into the gravel beside the other boy. Both still. Both gone.
I stood there, chest heaving, knife dripping, my breath fogging white in the cold. My hands shook—not from chill, but from what I had done.
Then the third one stepped out from behind a freight car.
He was older still. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Calm. Watching me with eyes like a wolf. He didn't rush. He circled, blade low, steps crunching on gravel. He had been waiting—waiting to see if I would last.
I was trembling, exhausted, but something in me steadied. My breaths slowed. My grip tightened.
He lunged.
This time, I didn't flinch. Our knives clashed in a screech of steel, sparks flying as the blades slid against each other. His strength drove me back, boots grinding in gravel. My knees buckled, but I angled his wrist, turning his momentum aside. My elbow snapped into his jaw. His head whipped back, teeth clacking.
He didn't fall.
We collided again—slash, block, twist, kick. His blade carved across my cheek, hot blood stinging my eye. I rammed my shoulder into his chest, slamming him into a railcar. The iron groaned with the impact. He snarled, headbutted me. Pain exploded in my skull, staggering me.
I nearly dropped. Almost.
But rage steadied me.
I feinted high, then cut low. My blade sank into his thigh. He roared, staggered, but still slashed at me, steel whistling past my face. I closed the distance, grabbing his collar, driving my knife up with everything I had.
The blade punched beneath his chin. Straight up. Into the skull.
His eyes went wide, then dimmed. His body went slack, sliding down against me. I shoved him off, and he collapsed into the gravel with a dull thud.
Silence returned. Heavy. Crushed between the railcars and the night sky.
I stood among three bodies, blood dripping into gravel, steam rising from wounds in the cold. My own cuts burned, my arms heavy, but I was alive. Alive where they weren't.
Hours later, when I staggered back into the village, my father was waiting by the fire. He looked at me—blood-soaked, hollow-eyed, knife still clutched in my hand.
He didn't ask what happened. He didn't need to.
He just nodded. Once.
And I understood: I wasn't a child anymore.
I was a weapon.
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That's Prologue Part 1 complete, the prologue is split into three chapters after the prologue is done it's on to chapter one