The Harlequir village was not marked on any official map. To the outside world, the rugged mountains of the North were merely barren rocks and eternal mist. But for those who knew the air currents and hidden passages, the clouds would part to reveal a valley where time seemed to have forgotten to run. It was a sanctuary of silence, where the sound of the wind through the trees was interrupted only by the metallic clink of blades and the crystalline laughter of a child.
At seven years old, Sálvia did not see the world in terms of targets, contracts, or geopolitics. To her, the "clan" was not an organization of assassins feared by kings; it was simply the comforting scent of herbal tea her mother prepared every morning and the roughness of her father's unshaven beard. She watched her father, Kael, chop wood under the cold sun with a precision she would only understand years later to be superhuman
— each strike landed exactly on the same millimeter of wood fiber, one after another, without a single wasted drop of sweat.
— Faster, little seed
— Kael would say, with a smile that lit up his stern face.
Sálvia stood balanced on a wooden post driven into the middle of a freezing stream. The water rushed furiously beneath her, but her task was to remain motionless, feeling the vibration of the wood under the soles of her bare feet. She thought she was just playing. At that time, Sálvia believed that all fathers in the world taught their daughters to walk noiselessly over dry leaves in autumn, or to identify the subtle scent of arsenic hidden in the perfume of jasmine flowers.
She was the prodigy. The "Genius of Harlequir." At seven, she already possessed what the elders called Flow Vision: the ability to see movement before it even happened. She could capture a butterfly between two fingers without crushing a single scale on its wings, simply by sensing the displacement of air caused by the beating of its membranes.
The Night of the Equinox
That night, the village was in celebration. The Equinox Festival was the only time of year when blades were kept in silk sheaths and cherry wine flowed freely.
Sálvia ran between the laden tables, wearing a simple linen tunic, short enough that she wouldn't trip over her own agile feet. The air was thick with the aroma of roasted meat and the sound of zithers. Her mother, Elena, a woman of calm eyes and hands that could throw a needle fifty yards with surgical precision, called her close.
— Come here, little seed. You're all disheveled.
Elena sat Sálvia between her knees and began to braid her green hair with a delicacy that masked the raw strength hidden in her fingers. She pulled a small, deep purple salvia flower from her pocket and carefully tucked it behind her daughter's ear.
— Promise me one thing, Sálvia
— Elena whispered, with a sudden seriousness that made the girl's heart skip a beat.
— No matter how sharp your blade becomes in the future... promise that your heart will remain soft like this flower. The world will try to harden you, but a Harlequir's true strength lies not in the steel, but in what it protects.
Sálvia laughed, not understanding the weight of those words, and hugged her mother's waist. Around them, life pulsed. Her uncles, who could kill a man in the blink of an eye, were now competing to see who could eat the most pie. They were assassins, yes, the best on the continent, but they were also bakers, weavers, and fathers. In that clearing, there were no monsters. There was only family.
Kael took Sálvia in his arms and spun her in the air. The sky was clear, studded with stars that looked like cold diamonds set in black velvet.
— One day
— Kael said, looking toward the dark horizon of the mountains
— you will be the greatest of us all. Your hands will do what ours never could. But for now... for now you are just my daughter. Go to sleep. Tomorrow, training begins with the first light of dawn.
Sálvia fell asleep in the attic of her cabin, lulled by an old nursery rhyme her mother hummed. She felt like the safest child in the world, protected by the most dangerous sisterhood that ever existed. She didn't know that, before dawn, the scent of her mother's tea would be replaced by the hot, metallic smell of fresh blood.
The Fall of the Sanctuary
The silence of the mountains was not broken by a war cry, but by the dry, horrific sound of steel meeting soft flesh.
The smell of smoke
— acrid, thick, and chemical
— awoke Sálvia. She opened her eyes and saw that the thatched roof of the cabin was no longer dark, but glowing with a sinister orange hue. Ash fell like black snow over her blanket. Before she could process the fear, the oak door of the cabin was torn off its hinges with a metallic crash.
A gigantic man, wearing full black armor that seemed to absorb the light of the flames, entered the room. He carried a broadsword, still dripping red.
But he never reached Sálvia's bed.
A blur shot across the room like a bolt of white light. Her father, who seconds before had looked like an ordinary man in his nightclothes, was now the embodiment of divine death. Without a sword, using only a kitchen knife that sat on the table, Kael slid under the invader's strike. With a movement that Sálvia's vision
— even as a genius
— could barely track, he drove the metal into the slit of the giant's helm.
The sound of the armored body hitting the wooden floor was drowned out by her father's roar.
— DON'T LOOK, SÁLVIA! CLOSE YOUR EYES!
— His voice was no longer one of affection. It was the roar of an alpha wolf protecting the den.
Outside, what Sálvia saw as she peered through the window was hell on earth. Hundreds of soldiers with white cloaks over black armor
— the Order of Purification
— had surrounded the village. They didn't come to fight; they came to exterminate.
Elena emerged from the shadows of the hallway. Her arms, once gentle as she braided Sálvia's hair, were stained with blood up to her shoulders. She wielded two curved blades, the Lunar Blades of Harlequir, which glowed with an ethereal light.
— There are too many of them, Kael!
— Elena cried, her voice hoarse from the smoke.
— They used runic sealing magic! Our concealment techniques aren't working! They knew exactly where we were!
Kael grabbed Sálvia by the arm, pulling her from the bed.
— Take her to the sanctuary beneath the roots of the Mother Tree!
— he ordered, handing Sálvia the wooden rosary he always carried in his pocket.
— I will buy time.
As Elena dragged Sálvia through the burning village, the girl saw the world collapse. She saw the uncle who gave her sweets pierced by three spears while protecting his grandson's cradle. She saw the houses where she grew up become funeral pyres.
And then, she saw her father.
Kael leaped into the center of a plaza, surrounded by twenty elite knights. He was a blur of fury. He didn't just use blades; he used the environment itself. A kick to a cauldron of boiling oil blinded three; a flick of his wrist sent hidden daggers into the throats of five more. Limbs flew, screams of agony cut through the night, and the earthen ground of the village turned into a viscous sludge of blood. Kael fought like a demon, massacring anyone who dared look in Sálvia's direction.
Yet, for every ten enemies he struck down, twenty emerged from the shadows of the forest.
— Here, Sálvia! Get in!
— Elena pushed her into a trapdoor camouflaged beneath the roots of an ancient tree.
— Do not come out for anything. Not if you hear my scream. Not if the world seems to be ending.
— Mommy, don't go! Stay with me!
— Sálvia pleaded, tears boiling in her eyes and carving tracks through the soot on her face.
Elena smiled one last time. It was the same calm smile from the festival just hours ago, but now blood trickled from a deep gash on her forehead, staining her teeth red.
— You are a Harlequir, my little seed. The strongest seed we ever planted. Survive and flourish.
The trapdoor was closed. Sálvia was plunged into total darkness, the smell of damp earth and mold contrasting with the scent of death outside. Through the tiny cracks, she heard everything. She heard the frantic clatter of her mother's blades, the sound of breaking bones, and the screams of the invaders. She heard the sound of steel snapping
— a dry sound that made her soul vibrate. And then, silence. A silence so heavy it felt as if it were crushing her lungs.
The Awakening of the Genius
Hours later, or perhaps days
— time no longer had meaning in the darkness
— Sálvia emerged. Her small fingers were raw from clawing at the wood of the trapdoor.
The village of Harlequir was no more. Where there had been laughter, there were now only the crackling of dying embers. Where there had been life, there was ash.
She found her father first. Kael was standing. He died on his feet. He was impaled by five spears that held him upright like a war monument. At his feet, a mountain of thirty enemy bodies bore witness to his final ferocity. He had fought until his heart stopped from lack of blood, not lack of will.
Her mother lay a few feet from him. Her calm eyes were still open, fixed in the direction of the tree where Sálvia had been hidden. Her hand was outstretched, as if trying to reach her daughter one last time.
Sálvia did not cry. Something inside her
— that "softness" her mother had asked her to preserve
— had been incinerated along with the houses. The trauma was so absolute that her mind fractured to survive. The cold of the mountains now felt warm compared to the ice that settled in her veins.
She walked calmly among the dead. She took the wooden rosary from her mother's hand and her father's two broken daggers. She was the last.
The silence was broken by the sound of heavy boots.
— There! Look! A survivor!
— a harsh, sneering voice echoed.
A search unit from the Order of Purification, consisting of thirty soldiers, emerged from the smoking rubble. They stopped, horrified by the carnage Kael and Elena had wrought before falling.
— By the gods... did two of them do all this?
— whispered a recruit, trembling at the sight of his fallen comrades.
The unit captain, a man whose face was marked by a fresh scar, fixed his eyes on the small figure of Sálvia. He drew his longsword, but his arm shook. He didn't see an orphan; he saw what remained of a nightmare.
— One is left. A survivor of these demons
— the captain said, trying to regain his authority.
— Kill her now! If we let Harlequir blood keep running, they will come back to slit our throats while we sleep. Extinguish the lineage!
The thirty soldiers surrounded the girl. Swords, spears, and crossbows were pointed at the seven-year-old child.
— She's just a child, sir...
— the recruit hesitated.
— She is NOT a child! She is a Harlequir!
— the captain roared.
— Look at her eyes! There is no soul there!
Sálvia slowly raised her head. Her eyes, once brown and warm, were now two pools of absolute darkness, reflecting the metal of the weapons pointed at her. She felt no fear. She felt the hunger of the clan. The "dance" her father had taught her awakened, not as a game, but as a hurricane of pure murderous instinct.
— You...
— Sálvia's voice came out hoarse, almost inaudible.
— You took my mother's smile.
The nearest recruit, driven by fear, lunged with his spear. Sálvia did not dodge. She simply... ceased to be there.
In a blur of speed that defied physics, she slid under the tip of the spear. With her father's broken dagger, she sliced the soldier's Achilles tendon. As he fell to his knees, she was already on his back, driving the metal into the base of his skull. It was a clean, surgical movement, exactly how her father used to chop wood.
What followed was not a battle. It was a bloody harvest.
Sálvia moved like a shadow among the flames. She was too small to be hit by longswords designed to fight men, and too fast to be surrounded. She used the soldiers' own size against them, leaping from shoulder to shoulder, leaving a trail of slit throats and spurting arteries.
She did not scream. She did not cry. She simply killed.
The captain tried to retreat, but tripped over the bodies of his own men, which had piled up in less than three minutes. The sound of thirty trained warriors breathing was replaced by the horrific sound of blood bubbling in the snow and the rattle of death.
Sálvia stood before the captain, the sole survivor. Her small hands, which hours ago held sweets, were soaked in red up to her elbows. Her porcelain face was flecked with hot splatters.
— Please... mercy...
— the captain sobbed, falling to his knees before the child.
Sálvia looked at him, but she didn't see a man. She saw the monster that had killed her mother. She gripped the wooden rosary with her left hand and, with her right, executed the perfect movement.
— My mother told me to have a soft heart
— she whispered as the blade pierced the captain's throat.
— But you left me nothing to love.
When the last body stopped twitching, Sálvia stood alone in the center of the ruins. The "Genius of Harlequir" had been baptized in the blood of her enemies. She sheathed the broken blade, wiped her face with the dirty linen of her tunic, and began to walk toward the mountains, never looking back once.
The child Sálvia had died that night. What remained was a shadow, a weapon waiting for a new master, and a soul that would only find peace when the last person responsible for her clan's fall was buried.