CHAPTER 4: Silence and Smoke
The assassin's eyes scanned the bookshelf, moving across the spines with methodical precision. Through the crack in the compartment door, Azel could see his face clearly despite the mask—young, maybe twenty years old, with a distinctive scar running across his chin. A pale line of raised tissue that caught the lamplight.
The man's hand reached toward the books. Toward the section that hid the mechanism. His fingers stretched out, gloved hand moving closer to the seventh book on the fourth shelf—
"Kade!" The woman's voice cut through the study like a whip crack. "We're pulling out!"
The shout came from somewhere deeper in the mansion, echoing through corridors and rooms. The young assassin—Kade, apparently—froze with his hand inches from the hidden switch. His head turned toward the sound, body tensing.
"Now, Kade!" the woman's voice came again, more urgent this time. "Orders from the top. We're done here."
Kade's hand hovered in the air for one more second. Two. Three.
Azel's lungs burned. He'd been holding his breath without realizing it, his entire body rigid with terror. The scream was still trapped in his chest, pressing against his ribs. His hand remained clamped over his mouth so tightly his jaw ached.
The assassin's dark eyes swept across the bookshelf one final time, as if some instinct told him something wasn't quite right. His gaze seemed to linger on the exact spot where the compartment door met the wall, where the crack let through its thin line of light.
Then he turned away.
"Coming," Kade called back. His voice was younger than the others, less rough. Almost… regretful? No, Azel had to be imagining that. These people had just murdered his family. They didn't feel regret.
The young assassin stepped back over Lyanna's body—her blood had spread wider now, dark and thick—and crossed to where his companions waited. The three figures moved to the shattered doorway, their boots leaving crimson footprints on the wooden floor.
"Anything useful?" the woman asked, still pressing a hand to her wounded forearm where Lyanna's blade had cut her.
"Papers," the shorter assassin said. "Records. Nothing immediately concerning, but we should report it."
"Burn it," the woman said flatly. "Burn all of it. The whole wing. Make sure nothing survives."
They left.
Their footsteps faded down the corridor, mixing with other sounds—shouts being called back and forth, the organized chaos of an operation winding down. The assassins were leaving. Pulling out. Their work here was done.
Azel stayed frozen in the compartment.
He knew he should move. Should get out, should run, should find help or hide somewhere better or do something other than crouch in this cramped stone box with his hand pressed over his mouth and his sister's body three feet away.
But he couldn't.
His muscles had locked up completely. His legs wouldn't respond. His hands wouldn't unclench. He was trapped inside his own body, paralyzed by a terror so complete it had shut down every function except the most basic. Breathe. Heartbeat. Nothing else worked.
In the distance, he could hear shouting growing more sporadic. The clash of steel that had been a constant background roar since the attack began was fading, becoming occasional instead of continuous. Fewer fights. Fewer defenders still standing.
Then, slowly, the sounds stopped altogether.
Silence fell over the Rashdov estate like a burial shroud.
It was worse than the noise had been. So much worse. Because silence meant it was over. Meant there was no one left fighting. No one left alive to fight.
The silence was absolute. Terrible. Complete.
Azel stayed frozen, pressed into his hiding place, and the minutes stretched into hours. He didn't dare move. Didn't dare make a sound. Lyanna had told him to stay hidden no matter what. His father would come for him, she'd said. When it was safe, his father would find him.
So he waited.
Through the crack, he could see his sister's body. Lyanna lay on her side, one arm outstretched toward the bookshelf. Toward him. Her fingers were slightly curled, as if she'd been reaching for something in her final moment. Her eyes stared at nothing, the light already gone from them.
Azel counted her fingers. All ten were visible from his vantage point. Small hands, still child-soft despite years of training. Nails cut short because long nails got in the way during sword practice. A small scar on her thumb from when she'd tried to help cook three years ago and cut herself on a kitchen knife.
He remembered that day. How she'd cried—not from pain but from embarrassment that a Rashdov had been clumsy enough to injure herself with a simple kitchen tool. Their mother had bandaged it and told her that even the greatest warriors made mistakes. That scars were just proof you'd learned something.
His sister had so many things left to learn. Would never learn them now.
The blood around her body had stopped spreading. It covered perhaps two feet of floor in an irregular pool, following the slight slope of the ancient floorboards. As Azel watched through the crack, the blood slowly changed color. From bright red to dark red to rust-brown as it dried. The process took hours, though Azel had no sense of time passing. Everything had collapsed into this single moment, this eternal now where he crouched in darkness and watched his sister's blood turn from life to stain.
At some point—Azel couldn't say when—he noticed a smell.
Smoke.
Faint at first, just a hint of something burning carried on air currents through the mansion's corridors. Then stronger. More insistent. The acrid scent of wood catching fire, of fabric and paper beginning to burn.
"Burn it," the woman had said. "Burn all of it."
They were destroying the evidence. Making sure nothing of the Rashdov family survived.
Orange light began to flicker in the hallway beyond his father's study. Not the steady glow of lamps, but the dancing, hungry light of flames. The fire was spreading through the mansion, room by room, consuming everything.
The temperature in the study began to rise.
Slowly at first, then faster. The air grew thick and hot. Smoke started seeping through the crack in the compartment door—thin wisps at first, then thicker. Gray tendrils that reached into Azel's hiding place like searching fingers.
He should leave. He knew he should leave. The fire was coming. The smoke would kill him if he stayed. The heat would kill him. The flames would kill him. He needed to get out, needed to run, needed to escape while he still could.
But he still couldn't move.
His father's voice echoed in his memory, from a training session months ago. They'd been practicing meditation techniques, learning to control fear responses. "Fear is a tool, Azel," Valdis had said, his deep voice calm and certain. "Master it or it masters you. A Rashdov who lets fear control him is no Rashdov at all."
Azel didn't feel like a master of anything.
He felt like a five-year-old boy hiding in a box while his world burned down around him. He felt small and helpless and utterly, completely terrified. The fear had him in its grip so tightly he couldn't think, couldn't move, couldn't do anything but crouch there and watch smoke curl through the crack.
Through the thickening haze, he could still see Lyanna's body. The smoke was starting to obscure her, turning her into a shadow, a ghost. Soon the flames would reach this room. Soon his sister would burn along with everything else.
Soon Azel would burn too, if he didn't move.
But he couldn't.
He was frozen. Mastered completely by the fear his father had warned him about. The terror had sunk its claws so deep into his mind that every rational thought, every survival instinct, every bit of training—all of it was buried under the crushing weight of what he'd witnessed.
The orange light grew brighter in the hallway. The smoke grew thicker. The heat built and built and built.
And Azel Von Rashdov, five years old, last surviving son of a murdered family, crouched in his hiding place and watched his sister's body begin to disappear into the smoke.
He felt like a little boy.
Because that's all he was.
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End of Chapter 4