The air inside the walls of the Meridian Royal Citadel was already cold, but the chill that sank into Lyra's bones was the cold of absolute terror. Thomson's final, silent message—the silver locket jammed into the column near the postern gate—was confirmation of the betrayal. Her husband, the King's Shadow, was dead. Her immediate world was collapsing, and the King's soldiers, led by the swaggering General Vorlag, would soon realize she and five-year-old Kevin were the last loose threads.
Lyra grabbed Kevin, whose eyes were wide and uncomprehending. There was no time for grief. Using her intimate knowledge of the Citadel's hidden passages—gleaned from years of her father's scholarly curiosity—she fled. For three frantic days, Lyra, fueled by sheer maternal will, evaded Vorlag's patrols. She moved Kevin through the dark, damp service tunnels and the narrow, dusty alleyways, whispering instructions to him: Be quiet. Be the shadow. Watch the guards' feet. It was the first, brutal lesson in stealth Kevin ever received.
But a scholar's daughter, however clever, could not outrun a Kingdom's army. They were cornered near the outer market district. Lyra stood before the approaching soldiers, her body thin but rigid. She didn't possess Thomson's skill; her defense was a desperate, intuitive sacrifice. She screamed a distraction, pointing toward a false escape route, her final act of love designed to buy Kevin mere seconds. The soldiers, impatient and ruthless, ended her life right before Kevin's eyes.
Kevin was not allowed the release of tears or screams. He was dragged away, a five-year-old boy whose mind instantly shut down, becoming a silent, horrified witness. He was thrown into The Citadel of Rust, a black hole of misery reserved for the King's political prisoners and expendable laborers.
For two long, grueling years, Kevin existed in the Citadel. He was too small to be useful for labor and too silent to be an enjoyable target. He survived on scraps, his small, frail body enduring the cold and the hunger. He learned to observe everything: the guards' routines, the subtle shifts in the inmates' moods, the smallest places of escape. His life was not about living; it was about the burning, singular name he overheard the guards mention during a transfer: Vorlag. Kevin built his entire existence on the belief that Vorlag was the direct killer of his mother and father, interpreting his father's last whisper—"Live for the silence"—as the moment of silent, precise revenge.
At the age of seven, the authorities deemed him harmless—a non-entity—and released him into the nearest rural area, a forgotten region bordering the untamed forest.
Kevin did not seek the villages. He sought the silence of the wild. For the next five years, until he was twelve, Kevin lived alone in the raw, unforgiving forest. He wasn't trained by a master; he was trained by pure, consuming hatred. His sole goal was simple: kill Vorlag. He studied the forest creatures, internalizing the need to be unseen, and built his body not for bulk, but for speed and precision—the philosophy of the Silent Blade.
At the age of twelve, a ruthless, self-taught killer, Kevin finally learned the devastating truth from a traveling merchant he ambushed: General Vorlag was dead, executed years ago.
Kevin's entire seven-year existence—his isolation, his training, his reason for survival—was dedicated to a ghost. The specific target of his rage was gone, but the rage itself remained.
He learned the location of the Meridian Royal Mausoleum, where the disgraced Vorlag was interned as a warning. Kevin infiltrated the heavily guarded capital, using every stealth and evasion skill he had painstakingly acquired. He bypassed the Royal Guard and entered the mausoleum. Standing before Vorlag's ceremonial sarcophagus, Kevin's years of cold discipline momentarily shattered. He pulled out the crude knife he carried—a remnant of his life in the forest—and furiously stabbed the inanimate tomb again and again, a final, cathartic act against the symbol of the man who had stolen his family.
The violent outburst immediately drew the Royal Guards. Kevin, fueled by the residual, explosive rage, fought back with lethal instinct, killing four guards before being finally subdued by overwhelming numbers.
The King, angered by the blatant disrespect for the royal dead and yet unnerved by the almost supernatural lethality of the twelve-year-old child, issued a unique sentence. Kevin was not executed. He was exiled to the ultimate prison: The Death March.
He was transported to a secret prison system, not bound by walls, but by an endless, hostile jungle. A place where there was only one rule, understood by every prisoner, every guard, and every predator: "Kill, or be Killed."