Chapter 140: The Weight of Names (1)
The blue-green light caught the signet ring as Soren placed it on Sylas’s desk, the metal making a soft click against polished wood. Blood had dried in the tiny crevices of House Trelaine’s crest, a falcon clutching a branch of some forgotten tree.
Sylas barely glanced at it, those unsettling green eyes flicking from the ring to Soren’s face. "Done," he said. No praise. No lecture. Just acknowledgment of a task completed.
Soren stood straight, hands relaxed at his sides. His body ached from the journey back through the Wastes, but he kept his breathing even, his expression neutral.
Dirt and sweat clung to him like a second skin, yet he made no move to brush it away. Such discomfort had become too familiar to warrant attention.
Mira stood in the corner, arms folded across her chest, her tattooed face half-hidden in shadow. She had said nothing since their return, offering neither criticism nor approval of his work.
Now her dark eyes met his briefly, mutual understanding passing between them, though not warmth. She had seen how he’d completed the task. That was enough.
"The target’s correspondence?" Sylas asked, picking up the ring to examine it more closely.
"Left untouched, as ordered," Soren replied. "The body won’t be discovered until morning. They’ll assume he died in his sleep."
Sylas nodded once, a barely perceptible movement. "Go. Clean yourself." He slipped the ring into a drawer, the matter already dismissed from his attention.
Soren turned to leave, feeling the weight of exhaustion settling deeper into his muscles. The shard against his chest remained neutral, Valenna’s presence quiet but watchful at the edges of his awareness.
As he moved toward the door, he felt it, the shift in atmosphere as he entered the main corridor where several assassins had gathered, ostensibly focused on their own tasks. Conversations faltered. Bodies tensed slightly. Eyes tracked his movement while pretending not to.
Word traveled fast in the Veiled Hand’s underground sanctuary. They already knew he’d completed another mission. Alone. Successfully. The third in as many weeks.
He kept his pace steady, his gaze forward, ignoring the whispers that followed in his wake. The mix of curiosity, fear, and resentment pressed against him like a physical force, yet he moved through it as he’d moved through the Wastes, acknowledging its presence without allowing it to alter his course.
’They measure what they cannot understand,’ Valenna murmured, breaking her extended silence. ’Let them look. Let them wonder.’
Soren continued toward the bathing chambers, leaving dusty footprints on ancient stone. Behind him, the whispers grew louder, spreading like ripples in still water.
–
The dining hall smelled of bland stew and stale bread, the Veiled Hand’s perpetual menu unchanged by season or circumstance.
Soren sat alone at the end of a stone bench, methodically working through his portion. The food tasted like nothing particular, just fuel for a body that required maintenance.
Around him, the usual evening conversations had taken on a different quality. Voices dropped when he passed, rose again in his wake.
Eyes darted in his direction then quickly away. The space around him remained conspicuously empty despite the crowded hall.
"—Sylas’s favorite now—" came a fragment from his left, just loud enough to be intentional.
"—third mission alone—" from his right, accompanied by a sidelong glance.
"—probably because Mira covers for him—" followed by snickering that died quickly when Soren’s gaze flicked in that direction.
He continued eating, focusing on the simple mechanics of knife and spoon. The shard against his chest remained neutral, neither warming nor cooling. Valenna’s presence lingered at the edges of his awareness, observing rather than commenting.
"Maybe Sylas should send both of you next time again."
The voice cut through the ambient noise, deliberately loud, deliberately challenging. Soren looked up, his movements unhurried.
Rhett stood several paces away, a bowl of stew in one scarred hand. Broad-shouldered and heavily muscled, the veteran assassin carried his years of service in the network of scars visible on his exposed forearms and the permanent sneer etched into his weather-beaten face. His eyes, pale blue, almost colorless, fixed on Soren with undisguised hostility.
"That way Mira can do the killing, and you can carry the proof," Rhett continued, his voice carrying to every corner of the suddenly quiet dining hall.
Dozens of eyes flicked to Soren, measuring his reaction. Even the servers behind the stone counter had frozen, ladles suspended mid-air.
Soren set his spoon down with deliberate care. "You talk too much for someone who’s failed more than he’s finished," he said, voice even and calm.
The air in the dining hall seemed to thicken, pressing against lungs suddenly remembering to breathe. Someone at a nearby table shifted nervously, the scrape of their bowl against stone unnaturally loud in the silence.
Rhett laughed, a rough, barking sound that held no humor, only the desperate edge of insecurity poorly masked. "You think a couple clean kills make you one of us?" He stepped closer, looming over the table. "Sylas only likes you because you’re still pretty enough to break."
Soren’s gaze shifted briefly across the hall to where Mira leaned against a distant pillar, watching. Her tattooed face revealed nothing, her posture carefully neutral. She wouldn’t intervene. Sylas’s rules were clear, disputes were settled through blades, not authority.
The shard against Soren’s chest pulsed once, cold and certain. Valenna remained silent, though her presence sharpened, focused.
Rhett set his bowl down with deliberate force, stew sloshing over the rim. "Let’s see what happens without your handler watching," he said, hand dropping to the curved blade at his hip.
Soren rose from the bench, his movements fluid and unhurried. The familiar cold focus settled into his chest, narrowing his perception to what mattered, distance, angles, the subtle tells in Rhett’s posture that telegraphed his intentions.
The dining hall seemed to expand around them as other assassins moved back, creating space for what was about to happen. No one spoke. No one interfered. This was the Veiled Hand’s way, strength proved through steel, disputes settled in blood.
Rhett drew first, his blade catching blue-green light as it cleared its sheath. The move was practiced, efficient, the product of years spent surviving missions that had broken others. He circled slightly, weight balanced on the balls of his feet, eyes never leaving Soren’s face.
"Draw your blade, pretty boy," he growled, impatience already fraying the edges of his control.
Soren remained motionless, watching. Not with fear or hesitation, but with the calm assessment of a predator measuring prey. He saw the slight tremor in Rhett’s left hand, the way his weight shifted too obviously before each step, the tension in his shoulders that would slow his reactions.
When he finally moved, it was with the liquid economy that had become his signature. His blade cleared its sheath with barely a whisper, the metal catching light as it settled naturally into guard position. No flourish, no excess, just deadly precision distilled into human form.
Rhett attacked first, as Soren had known he would. Impatience and insecurity driving him forward, blade sweeping in a horizontal arc meant to force Soren back or down. A veteran’s move, designed to establish dominance through aggression.
Soren wasn’t there. A minimal shift of weight, a half-step at precisely the right angle, and Rhett’s blade cut through empty air where his torso had been.
The older assassin’s momentum carried him slightly past his intended target, balance compromised for a fraction of a second.
It was enough.
Soren moved in the same smooth motion, blade finding the opening beneath Rhett’s extended arm. No hesitation, no unnecessary force, just surgical precision as steel slipped between ribs, angling upward toward the heart.
Rhett’s eyes widened, more with surprise than pain. His mouth opened slightly, as if to continue his taunt, but only a soft exhalation emerged. His blade clattered to the stone floor, suddenly useless in nerveless fingers.
Soren maintained eye contact, his hand steady on the hilt, feeling the rapid, weakening pulse transmitted through the blade. No hatred, no pleasure, no particular emotion at all, just the calm certainty of a task being completed exactly as required.
The veteran assassin’s body sagged against him, life already fading from those pale blue eyes. Soren supported his weight, preventing the ungraceful sprawl of sudden death. A professional courtesy, extended even in this moment.
When Rhett’s body went completely limp, Soren withdrew his blade and stepped back, allowing the corpse to settle onto the stone floor. He wiped his weapon clean on a cloth from his pocket, then resheathed it with the same silence with which he’d drawn it.
The dining hall remained frozen, dozens of witnesses struck motionless by the speed and finality of what they had just observed.
No one had expected Rhett to die, to lose perhaps, to be humiliated possibly, but not to have his life ended with such clinical efficiency.
Soren looked up, his gaze sweeping the room once. Not in challenge or triumph, but simple acknowledgment of the new reality his actions had created. He was no longer just a recruit. No longer an outsider to be tolerated or tested.