The great fortress of Northwatch had settled into its afternoon rhythm when the pretense finally shattered.
Adrian sat in the family wing's library, trying to focus on his studies while worry gnawed at his chest. His father and a hundred knights had been gone since dawn, riding hard for Harrowick. The messenger who had brought word of the attack now rested in the guest quarters, recovering from his desperate ride.
Or so everyone believed.
It was the silence that alerted Adrian first—the sudden absence of the usual sounds from the main hall. No servants chattering, no guards calling orders, no Captain Marsh's gruff voice coordinating patrols. Just... quiet.
Adrian closed his book and made his way through the corridors toward the great hall. The family wing felt strangely empty, though that shouldn't have been unusual. Most of Northwatch's activity centered around the military quarters, the barracks, the armories. The Blackthorn family section was always quieter.
But this was different. This was the silence of held breath.
He found his mother in the main hall, standing perfectly still beside an overturned chair. Her face was pale, her green eyes wide with something between confusion and fear. Across the room, several servants huddled behind a great table, their faces etched with terror.
And in the center of the hall stood the messenger.
Except it wasn't the messenger anymore.
The man's skin hung in tatters around a frame that had grown taller, more angular. Black chitin gleamed where flesh had been, and eyes that now burned with hellish red light surveyed the room with predatory satisfaction. In one clawed hand, he held what looked like a blade made of solidified shadow.
Three guards lay dead at his feet, their throats opened so quickly they hadn't had time to cry out.
"Such a peaceful afternoon," the demon said, its voice like gravel grinding against bone. "The great Lord Dorian rides away, taking his best warriors, leaving only women and children to guard his precious home."
Adrian felt ice settle in his veins. The messenger—this demon—had studied them. Learned their routines, their defenses, their weaknesses. It had delivered a real message about a real attack, then waited for the perfect moment to strike.
"Mother," Adrian said quietly, his twelve-year-old voice steady despite the circumstances. "Step back toward the door."
The demon's burning gaze fixed on him, and for a moment its expression shifted to something like amusement. "And what do we have here? The young lord, ready to play hero?"
More shapes detached themselves from the shadows—two additional demons that must have been hiding within the fortress since dawn, waiting for their companion's signal. Adrian's mind raced. Three demons, inside Northwatch's supposedly impregnable walls, with most of the garrison's strength away with his father.
The lead demon raised its shadow-blade. "I think we'll start with the boy. Let his mother watch, then—"
It never finished the sentence.
Adrian moved faster than any twelve-year-old should have been able to move. His hand found a fallen guard's sword even as he dove aside from the demon's strike. The blade felt familiar in his grip, natural, like an extension of his will.
And as his survival instincts overrode twelve years of careful pretense, the sword began to glow.
White at first—the base spirit flame that all knights learned to manifest. But as Adrian's control slipped, as ancient memories of command and combat surged to the surface, the light began to change.
The white flame deepened, darkened, bleeding into crimson.
The demons hesitated, their burning eyes widening. They could sense what this was—power that had no place in a human child, flame that spoke of authority they had known in another realm.
"Impossible," the lead demon hissed.
Adrian's lips curved into a smile that belonged on a much older face. When he spoke, his voice carried the cold authority of someone who had once commanded legions.
"Behind me, Mother. These creatures have forgotten their place."
The first demon lunged, shadow-blade whistling through the air. Adrian met it with steel wrapped in crimson fire. The clash sent sparks cascading across the hall, the demon's weapon shattering against the blazing edge of his sword.
Before the creature could recover, Adrian's blade took its head.
The second demon attacked from the side, claws extended. Adrian spun, his crimson flame trailing arcs of light, and opened the creature from shoulder to hip. It collapsed in a spray of black ichor.
The third tried to flee toward the servants. Adrian was there first, moving with inhuman speed, his burning blade taking the demon through the chest before it could harm the cowering staff.
Silence fell over the hall.
Adrian stood among the corpses, his sword still blazing with crimson fire, his gray eyes reflecting that same bloody light. For a moment, the mask of childhood fell away entirely, revealing something far older and more dangerous than anyone in that room could have imagined.
Then he blinked, and he was twelve years old again.
The crimson flame flickered and died. The sword clattered to the floor as Adrian's hands began to shake—not with fear, but with the aftermath of power released after so many years of restraint.
Lady Elara stared at her son, her face white with shock. The servants whispered prayers behind their makeshift barricade. And from the corridors beyond came the sound of running feet as the remaining garrison, finally alerted by the silence, came rushing to investigate.
"Adrian," his mother whispered. "What... what are you?"
He looked at her with eyes that held depths no child should possess, then carefully schooled his expression back into something appropriate for his age.
"I'm your son," he said softly. "And I will always protect this family."
But as Captain Marsh and his men burst into the hall, weapons drawn, Adrian knew that everything had changed. The careful pretense of twelve years had been shattered in moments of crimson fire.
There would be questions now. Questions he wasn't sure he could answer without revealing truths that would destroy the life he had built.
The boy who had once been Azrael Bloodrend wiped demon blood from his hands and prepared to face a future far more uncertain than any battle.