Days passed like water dripping from stone in the Veiled Hand's underground refuge. Soren counted them by the aches in his body, each morning bringing new pains from muscles he hadn't known existed.
The assassins' sanctuary was unlike anything he'd imagined, not the blood-soaked den of killers the Church painted in its sermons, but something closer to a monastery.
Silence hung in the air, broken only by the controlled exhales of practitioners, the subtle shift of feet on stone, the clean sound of blade striking blade.
Soren sat cross-legged on a stone ledge overlooking the main training hall, his back pressed against the cool wall. Below him, a dozen hooded figures moved through synchronized forms, their curved daggers catching blue-green light from the strange lanterns that illuminated the underground complex.
Not a single wasted movement. Not a single unnecessary breath.
