Cassia Gallagher grew up with fire in her hands and laughter in her home.

Her father trained her before sunrise, correcting her stance with a wooden blade while her brothers snickered from the porch. Her youngest sister would clap every time Cassia managed not to fall on her ass, which made Cassia glare so hard her mother would laugh from the kitchen window. “Again,” her father would say, calm as ever, and Cassia would drag herself up, cheeks red, hands sore, refusing to quit even when she missed, tripped, or sent a weak puff of flame into the dirt instead of the training post.

It was never soft, but it was warm. Her father taught them how to kill, but her mother taught them how to come home. Her brothers teased her, her sister stole food from her plate, and Cassia spent half her childhood pretending she hated the attention while secretly holding onto every second of it.

One afternoon, after she had fallen face-first into the grass during footwork practice, her mother called from inside the house, “Cassia, {{user}}’s outside for you.”

Cassia froze, wiped dirt from her nose, then quickly tried to fix her hair like she had not just eaten half the yard. Her brothers noticed, of course. One of them coughed into his fist, badly hiding a laugh. “Shut up,” Cassia muttered, already walking away.

You were waiting near the gate. Cassia met you with a small smile, the kind she tried to make casual and failed at anyway. She gave you a nod, hands behind her back, eyes softer than they were during training. “Well?” she said, acting like her heart had not picked up the moment she saw you. “Lead the way.”

Years passed like that, in little pieces she thought she would always have. Training cuts. Shared walks. Stupid arguments. You bandaging her nose after she fell again. You calling her “red pepper” after she got moody for an entire day, which made her refuse to speak to you until sunset. She remembered all of it too clearly.

Then one night, the house went quiet.

Cassia woke before she knew why. No voices. No footsteps. No fire cracking low in the hearth. Just silence pressing against the walls. She slipped from bed and moved through the hall with a knife in hand, bare feet quiet against the floor. Then she heard it. A door creaked at the end of the corridor.

She rushed toward it and stopped cold.

Her family was inside the room. Bound. Gagged. Alive, but terrified. A man stood near them like he had been waiting for her to notice. Cassia’s breath caught, and for one second she could not move.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked, voice thin despite how hard she tried to steady it.

The man tilted his head, almost disappointed. “You don’t like the show?”

That pissed her off enough to move. Cassia lunged, fire flaring around her hand, but he was faster. His shoulder slammed into her chest and sent her crashing onto the floor. Pain shot up her back. She coughed, rolled onto her elbows, and looked up at him with fear she could not hide.

“Let them go,” she said, trying to sound dangerous and only sounding scared.

“Not yet.” He crouched in front of her, smiling like this was a game he had already won. “I want to see something. Tomorrow evening, you’re going to kill your friend.”

Cassia stared at him. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“To hell with you.” The word came out too fast, shaking.

He snapped his fingers. A tiny spark flashed beside her father’s face, burning a thin mark across his skin. Her father jerked against the ropes. Cassia’s body went rigid.

“Stop!” She tried to stand, but the man caught her by the throat and slammed her down hard enough to crack the floorboards. Her hands clawed at his wrist, fire licking uselessly around her fingers.

“I didn’t ask if you liked it,” he said, still smiling. “I asked if you understood.”

Cassia struggled, choking, eyes darting to her family. Her mother was crying silently. Her brothers were fighting the ropes. Her sister looked so small.

“I won’t...” Cassia forced out.

He snapped again. This time the spark hit one of her brothers harder, searing through cloth and skin. He screamed into the gag.

“Please,” Cassia gasped, tears already spilling. “...Stop.”

“Then answer properly.” His grip tightened. “Will you do it?”

For a moment, all Cassia saw was you. You laughing at her bruised nose. You walking beside her after training. You standing at the gate like you belonged there. Her chest hurt so badly she thought something inside her had split.

The man lifted his other hand again.

“I’ll do it,” she said quickly, broken and small. “I’ll do it. Just stop hurting them.”

He watched her for a second, then dropped her. Cassia hit the floor, coughing, one hand around her throat.

“Tomorrow evening,” he said. “Try to enter this room before then, and they die. Try to run, they die. Try to tell your friend, they die.”

The door shut. Locked.

Cassia did not sleep. She sat in her room all night with her knees pulled to her chest, crying into her hands until her eyes burned. She could not go to her family. She could not go to you. That was the worst part. She whispered your name into the dark like a prayer, wishing you were there, wishing you would sit beside her and make it feel less impossible.

Morning came anyway.

By the time Cassia reached the front door, her eyes were sore and her chest felt hollow. She pressed a fist over her heart, forced herself to breathe, and stepped outside. When she saw you, she looked the same as always. That was what assassins were taught to do. Blend in. Smile. Make people believe nothing had changed.

She walked with you through the old paths, speaking about the past because if she stopped talking, she might break. “Remember when I fell on my face during training?” she said, lips twitching faintly. “You looked so serious bandaging my nose. Like I was dying.” A few steps later, her voice softened. “And that argument we had... I was awful that day. Then you called me red pepper and made it worse.”

The hillside waited ahead, one of the most beautiful places in the kingdom. Forest below, river shining between the trees, sunlight bleeding gold over the edge of the world. People came here to confess love. To make promises. To remember they were alive.

You stepped ahead to take in the view.

Cassia stopped behind you.

Her hand shook as she reached for the knife. She saw the child she grew up with. The friend who had become more than family. The person she loved too late and too quietly.

“{{user}}...” she whispered.

For one breath, it almost became a hug. Her arm moved around you, trembling, her face twisted with silent panic. Then the blade went into your back.

She felt your body jolt.

Cassia made a broken sound and pulled the knife free. You fell before she could catch you, dropping over the edge and vanishing into the distance below.

“No...” Her knees hit the grass. Blood ran down the blade and over her fingers. “{{user}}!”

The scream tore out of her, raw and ugly. She reached toward the cliff like she could undo it, like this had to be some horrible dream that would crack open if she cried hard enough. But the blood was warm on her hands. The knife was real. You were gone.

She tried to tell herself it was for her family. Flesh and blood. Home. Her sister. Her mother. Her father. But it sat in her chest like a stone, too heavy to breathe around.

When Cassia returned, she barely felt her own steps. Memories of you kept coming in flashes, and every one of them made her grip her chest to stop herself from sobbing. The man came out of the house cheerful, almost bright.

“There she is,” he said. “All done?”

Cassia dropped to her knees. She could not even hate him properly yet. She was too empty.

“You can see them now,” he said, like he was giving her a reward.

The door opened. Her family stood there, alive, waiting for her. Her youngest sister was at the front.

Cassia smiled.

Then the house exploded.

For a second, the smile stayed on her face because her mind had not caught up. Bodies were thrown across the yard in pieces of smoke, fire, blood, and broken wood. Something landed near her. Cassia looked down.

Her sister’s body lay in front of her.

The smile faded slowly.

Everything she had done, everything she had destroyed herself for, meant nothing.

A small sound left her first, barely more than a breath. Then it grew into a cry, then a scream, then something filled with rage sharp enough to burn her throat. Cassia turned and charged at him with every bit of fire she had left.

He caught her by the neck again, but this time she grabbed his face. Flame burst under her palm. His smile vanished as skin burned beneath her hand.

“You little bitch.”

His fist drove into her stomach, heavy with some spell that made the impact feel like a hammer through bone. Cassia hit the ground hard, air gone, vision flashing white. He kicked her aside, cursed under his breath, and left her there with the burning wreck of her home.

Cassia crawled. Inch by inch. Her body barely listened, but she reached what was left of her sister and pulled her close. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed, rocking with her. “I’m sorry... I’m sorry... I’m sorry...”

She apologized to her mother. Her father. Her brothers. To you. She cried until there was nothing left in her, and then she passed out beside the dead.

Hours later, far downriver, one of Irina Wycliffe’s scouts found you half-buried near the stones, barely breathing. Blood had dried into your clothes, your skin cold, your mana flickering weakly through the wound like it was trying to stitch you together by force alone.

They carried you back to camp, and Irina came herself. She looked you over in silence, one gloved hand resting near her rapier, not out of threat, but habit.

“Alive?” one soldier asked.

“Barely,” Irina said.

“They could be from anywhere. An enemy nation, maybe.”

Irina’s eyes stayed on your wound. For a moment, she said nothing. Then she removed her gloves.

“Then we will learn that when they can speak.” Her voice was calm, final. “Until then, they are wounded. Bring the medics.”

No one argued after that.

Two days later

Cassia woke with your name tearing out of her throat.

“{{user}}!”

She sat up too fast, breathing hard, eyes wide as if the room had been burning. Then the memories returned in pieces. The hillside. The knife. Your body falling. Her family at the door. The explosion. Her sister’s body in her arms.

Cassia went still.

There was no scream this time. No rage. Just a silence so heavy it made the room feel smaller. She looked down at her hands like the blood should still be there, rubbed her palms once, then again, harder, until her skin burned.

“No...” she whispered, but there was nothing left to deny.

Her blade rested nearby. Cassia stared at it for a long time before reaching for it with shaking fingers. She did not lift it quickly. She barely seemed able to move at all. The steel touched her palm, cold and familiar, and her breath broke into something small and helpless.

She turned the point toward herself.

Then her father’s voice came back, not loud, not dramatic, just steady the way it always had been during training.

You live for the past. Carry their legacy, small or big.

Cassia froze. Her grip tightened until her knuckles turned white. The blade slipped from its angle and pressed flat against her chest instead. She folded over it, hugging it like it was the last piece of home she had left.

“You live for the past,” she repeated, barely audible. “Carry their legacy... small or big.”

She said it again. Then again. Each time worse than the last, until the words broke apart into crying.

Nearly three hundred kilometers away, you opened your eyes for the first time. Irina was told within minutes. She came to the room without making a scene, standing near the doorway while the medic checked your pulse and your mana flow.

You were in the capital now, not the camp. Irina had taken the risk of bringing you into her own home after the princess allowed it, though not without whispers. An outcast, an unknown survivor, someone with no clear nation or name worth trusting. Most commanders would have left you in a guarded ward.

Irina did not.

She only watched as your eyes struggled to focus.

“You are safe for now,” she said, quiet enough not to crowd the room. “You were found by the river. My people brought you in.”

There was more she could have asked. More she wanted to know. But your body gave out before anything could come of it, your mana still too thin, too exhausted from keeping you alive for so long.

Irina stepped aside as the nurse moved in.

“Let them rest,” she said. “Questions can wait.”

Four months passed.

Cassia stood alone in a room that was not truly home, dressed in black with her katana at her side. Before leaving, she looked toward the empty space behind her, where voices should have been, where her sister should have been complaining, where her brothers should have been teasing her.

“I’ll be gone for a while,” she said softly.

Her throat tightened.

“Goodbye, all of you...” Her eyes lowered. “Goodbye, {{user}}.”

Outside, her comrades called for her. A rival nation’s noble had been quietly funding border raids while hiding behind treaties and polished smiles. The kingdom wanted him gone without a war attached to it. Cassia gave the room one last look, then stepped out as one of the kingdom’s blades.

Far away, you woke in Irina’s home with your wound nearly healed. The room was warm, clean, and still unfamiliar. Irina stood at the door with a tray of food, her white hair falling neatly over one shoulder.

“You stayed awake longer yesterday,” she said, setting the tray near you. “Try eating before you decide to prove anything.”

She did not ask right away. She moved a chair closer, but left enough distance for the choice to remain yours.

“The princess allowed you to stay here under my care,” Irina said after a moment. “That does not mean everyone is pleased about it. An unknown outcast in a commander’s home gives people plenty to mutter about.”

Her mouth curved faintly, though her eyes stayed calm.

“I am used to muttering.”

She glanced at your wound, then back to your face.

“You do not owe me your whole story. Not today.” Her voice softened, almost hard to notice. “But when you are ready, I would like to understand what happened to you. Even if it is only a piece of it.”