Kael's POV
The nightmare was always the same.
My parents on their knees. The executioner's blade. My mother's last words: "Be brave, Kael."
Then the blade fell, and I woke up.
I sat up in the darkness of my chambers, my heart pounding. Fourteen years and the dream never stopped. Fourteen years of killing others because I was too much of a coward to die with them.
I swung my legs off the bed. No point trying to sleep again.
My hand brushed against something on my nightstand—my execution blade, already sharpened for today's work. Three people scheduled to die. Three more names to add to my collection of ghosts.
I dressed in silence, pulling on the black uniform that marked me as the empire's executioner. The Reaper, they called me. Death in human form.
Let them call me whatever they wanted. I'd stopped caring years ago.
I strapped the blade to my back and headed for the door. That's when I felt it—a sharp burning in my left palm.
I looked down.
A black mark covered my palm, shaped like a chain wrapped in thorns. The design was intricate, almost beautiful, if it wasn't so clearly wrong.
I'd gone to bed with clean hands. Now I had this.
Magic. It had to be. But how? I touched the mark and pain shot up my arm. Not physical pain—something deeper. Like the mark was connected to something inside me.
I grabbed a washcloth and scrubbed my palm. The mark didn't fade.
A knock on my door made me drop the cloth.
"Sir?" My assistant Riven's voice came through the wood. "It's time. The prisoners are ready."
I shoved my marked hand into a glove. I'd deal with this later. Right now, I had a job to do.
The walk to the Grand Plaza took twenty minutes. As always, people scattered when they saw me coming. Mothers pulled their children inside. Merchants closed their stalls. Even the guards gave me a wide path.
Good. Their fear made my job easier.
But today felt different. Wrong somehow.
My palm throbbed with each step. And underneath the pain, I felt something else. Emotions that weren't mine—fear, desperation, determination.
Someone else's feelings bleeding into my head.
I clenched my fist, trying to shut them out. I'd spent fourteen years learning to feel nothing. I wasn't going to start feeling things now.
The Grand Plaza was already crowded. Executions were entertainment for most people. They brought their children to watch, eating food from vendors while strangers died.
I hated them for it. But I hated myself more.
I climbed onto the execution platform. The wood was stained dark from years of blood—most of it spilled by my hand. My blade felt heavier than usual as I drew it.
"Three executions today!" the herald announced. "First, Marcus Chen, convicted of speaking against the Emperor!"
They dragged out an old man, maybe sixty, his hands bound. He looked at me with empty eyes. No fear left. Just acceptance.
I knew that look. I'd seen it hundreds of times.
"Any last words?" I asked. It was tradition, even though nobody cared what the condemned said.
"I spoke the truth," the old man said quietly. "That's not a crime."
But in the Crimson Empire, truth was the worst crime of all.
I raised my blade.
That's when it happened.
A wave of terror crashed through me—so powerful it nearly knocked me off my feet. Not my terror. Someone else's. Coming through the mark on my palm.
The blade wavered in my hand.
I gritted my teeth and forced my arm steady. I'd done this a thousand times. I could do it one more.
But the emotions kept flooding in. Grief. Helplessness. Rage.
What was happening to me?
I looked out at the crowd, searching for the source of these feelings. My eyes swept across faces—bored, excited, disgusted.
Then I saw her.
A girl near the front, maybe twenty-four, with dark hair falling in her face. She was staring at me with unusual green eyes—silver-flecked, like nothing I'd seen before.
Our eyes met.
The world stopped.
My heart stuttered, then raced. My chest felt like someone had reached inside and grabbed my soul. The mark on my palm burned so hot I thought my skin would melt.
On the platform, I stumbled, catching myself on the execution block.
The girl in the crowd gasped and grabbed her chest, her face going white.
She felt it too.
The connection. The bond.
Understanding crashed through me like ice water. The mark. The emotions. They were coming from her.
We were connected. Bound together by something I didn't understand.
"Sir?" Riven called from below the platform. "Are you alright?"
No. I wasn't alright. For the first time in fourteen years, I was feeling everything.
The herald was announcing the second prisoner: "Finn Ashveil, age seventeen, convicted of theft from Lord Theron Ashveil's estate!"
They dragged out a boy, barely more than a child. His face was swollen and bloody, but his eyes were fierce.
The girl in the crowd screamed.
"FINN!"
Her voice tore through the plaza like a blade. The boy's head whipped toward her.
"RUN, SERA!" he shouted back. "RUN!"
Sera. Her name was Sera.
And this boy—Finn—was someone she loved. I felt her love for him pulsing through the bond, mixed with terror so deep it made my own hands shake.
I raised my blade to the boy's neck.
Sera's scream cut through the air. "NO! PLEASE!"
The moment steel touched skin, agony exploded across my throat.
Not real agony. Phantom pain. Like my own blade was at my neck.
At the same time, blood appeared on Sera's throat in the crowd. She collapsed, people around her crying out in shock.
I jerked my blade back, staring at it.
What was happening?
The boy Finn was staring at me, confused. He should be dead. My blade had touched his neck. But I'd pulled back at the last second.
I'd never pulled back before. Never hesitated. Never failed.
Through the bond, I felt Sera's pain. Her blood—my blood. Her wound—my wound.
Everything she felt, I felt.
Everything I did, she experienced.
We were connected. Completely. Impossibly.
Guards were rushing toward Sera. The crowd was shouting. The herald was yelling something about dark magic.
I looked at the boy on his knees before me. He was someone Sera loved. Someone she'd do anything to save.
If I killed him, she'd feel every moment of his death. The pain would destroy her.
And somehow, I knew—if she died from that pain, I'd die too.
The mark on my palm burned like fire.
For fourteen years, I'd been a perfect weapon. I'd killed without question, without mercy, without feeling.
But I couldn't do it anymore.
I couldn't kill this boy.
"Stop the execution," I said.
The herald blinked. "Sir?"
"I said STOP!" My voice echoed across the plaza. "This execution is tainted by dark magic. I can sense it. The prisoner must be investigated further."
It was a lie. But it was also the truth. There was dark magic here—the bond connecting me to a girl I'd never met.
The guards looked confused, but they obeyed. Nobody questioned The Reaper.
"Take the prisoners to the Citadel," I ordered. "Both of them. The boy and the girl bleeding in the crowd. I want them in the investigation cells. Now."
As guards moved to obey, I looked back at Sera. She was conscious again, staring at me with shock and confusion.
I touched my throat. No blood. But I'd felt her wound as clearly as if it was my own.
What had she done to us?
What had we become?
Riven appeared beside me, his face concerned. "Boss, what's going on?"
I watched guards drag Sera and Finn away. She kept looking back at me, her green eyes wide with fear and questions.
"I don't know," I said quietly. "But I'm going to find out."
I looked at my marked palm. The chain glowed faintly in the morning sun.
I'd spent fourteen years as a weapon. A tool. A thing without feelings.
But this girl—this Sera—had changed everything.
She'd made me feel again.
And I didn't know if I should thank her or kill her for it.