Part 1: Shards of the Past in the Present
Pain tore through his consciousness like a hook ripping his soul out through his breastbone. The last things he saw were a scarlet fan of blood on the faded grass, his own shield, shattered by an axe, and the icy sky of Freis, indifferent and endless.
Carl Nowenstein woke up.
Not in hell. Not in oblivion. In his bedroom. In Erlenholm Castle.
He inhaled sharply, like a man washed ashore after a shipwreck. The air smelled not of blood and gunpowder, but of polished wood wax, the faint smoke from the fireplace, and an almost imperceptible, achingly familiar scent — lavender from Eleonor's dress. His heart hammered, trying to escape its cage of ribs. He sat up, his knuckles white on the oak edge of the bed. His gaze darted around the room — familiar tapestries depicting Nowenstein hunts, a heavy chest, a suit of armor stand holding not his field armor, but a ceremonial breastplate, gleaming in the morning light.
Gods... or demons? Or simply madness?
He stood, swaying, and walked to the large mirror in its carved frame. In the reflection, a man of about thirty stared back at him, with chestnut hair not yet touched by the gray of grief, a face bearing only hints of fatigue lines, not the deep furrows of despair. Amber eyes, usually calm and assessing, were now wide with a wild, animalistic incomprehension. He touched his cheek. The skin was firm, alive. He clenched his fist — strength flowed through his muscles, unspent by years of pointless war and longing.
I died. I remember the cold steel in my gut. I remember... Amalia. Eleonor. I remember everything.
A wave of memory crashed over him not as pictures, but as physical torture: his daughter's laughter, cut short in the silence of the Academy archives; the smell of medicine in his wife's room; the cold disdain from the Crown, watching the fall of its loyal vassal; the icy fury in the eyes of "allies" who turned out to be executioners.
He groaned, pressing his forehead against the cold mirror. The pain was so real it left no room for doubt. This was no dream. This was a chance. A return. Retribution forged from time itself.
The goal crystallized in his mind instantly, crystal clear and merciless as a blade: None of this will happen. Never.
Looking around the bedroom, he didn't find Eleonor. Not surprising; Carl rarely rose early, unlike her. He dressed quickly, mechanically, his fingers fastening his doublet's buckles on their own. His hand reflexively reached for the cufflink case, but they weren't there. Frowning, he began searching for them; they were an expensive gift from Eleonor for his last... no, his next birthday. The difference in time was staggering.
Stepping into the corridor, he saw the butler, old Frederick. The man bowed respectfully. "Good morning, my lord. The Countess is already in the garden with the young Lady Amalia. Shall I have breakfast served?"
His daughter's name struck him like a blow to the heart. Alive. Here. In the garden. It took all of Carl's legendary self-control not to sprint, not to scoop her into his arms and weep. He nodded, his voice hoarse: "Later, Frederick. Bring me the latest reports from the stewards. And all dispatches from the borders. Everything, down to the last scrap."
The Earl's gaze, usually lazily assessing, was now focused, like a predator scenting blood. Frederick gave an almost imperceptible start. "At once, my lord."
In his study, Carl approached the calendar. His fingers traced the date. Eleven months. Eleven months until the day the carriage would take Amalia to the royal capital, to the Academy of Magical and Secular Arts. The trap that would snap shut three years later.
The Academy is closed to outsiders. Servants are forbidden. Guard — only the royal watch at the gates, useless against a quiet, insidious threat. His mind worked coldly and quickly, eliminating wrong paths. He couldn't cancel the decree. He couldn't surround his daughter with soldiers. But he could give her a shadow. A shadow that sees from the darkness.
A name surfaced from his memory, dropped once in a tavern by a drunken mercenary: Lyra. The wildling from the roofs of Ebros. Survives where even a rat would croak. They say in five years, she'll grow into something fearsome.
The plan formed instantly, brutal in its simplicity. Find her. Hire her. No — acquire her. Give her what she's never had, in exchange for the only thing she possesses — the ability to survive and kill. Make her the sword and shield for Amalia.
He sat at his desk and took up his quill. The first letter — to the royal chancellery, an official protest against the Academy's charter. An empty formality, a smokescreen. The second letter — to his wife. The quill hovered over the parchment.
"Eleonor..."
How to describe the horror he had seen in her eyes? How to convey the weight of her quiet fading? He couldn't. He wrote simply, with an unaccustomed tenderness breaking through the steel frame of his resolve: "My love, I must leave urgently for the capital. A matter that cannot wait. I implore you, take care of yourself. Your health is my peace. Kisses. Your Carl."
He tucked a fresh sprig of lavender from the candlestick on his desk into the letter. A small detail, meaningless in the world of impending battles. But for him — the first step towards saving everything.
Part 2: Laws of Stone and Blood
Ebros didn't wake up. Ebros simply shed its skin. The night skin, sticky with fear and shady dealings, peeled away, revealing the day skin — sweaty, noisy, full of feigned labor. Lyra watched this molting from the peak of her world — the flat roof above the dyer's warehouse.
She was cold. She was always cold. It lived in the stone beneath her back, in the metal of the drainpipe under her fingers, in the very air, smelling of smoke, slops, and despair. She curled into a ball, trying to preserve her body heat, and listened to the city below. Her eyes, gray as wet pavement, slid over the figures in the market, searching for rhythm, for a flaw, for an opportunity.
Rule one: the food of the strong belongs to the strong. And the strong one is the one who takes it.
Her target was marked: a potbellied merchant in a velvet caftan, boasting to a spice vendor about his bulging purse. Lyra didn't see a man in him. She saw movement, weight, a route. She slid off the roof like a shadow, merging with the narrow crack between the houses. Her thin, wiry body moved silently, each movement honed by hunger and fear. She was a needle, stitching herself into the coarse fabric of the crowd.
The theft was perfect — swift, unnoticed. The heavy purse vanished into the folds of her tattered shirt. She was already retreating, melting into an archway, when she felt a gaze. Not absent-minded, but piercing. Predatory.
Three men emerged from the alley. "The Razors." Lyra knew them by their gait — swaggering, arrogant, with the habit of striking first. But today, in their eyes, it wasn't just robbery. It was a contract.
Rule two: you only guard the back of someone who has guarded yours. No one had ever guarded Lyra's.
"Hey, mouse!" shouted the largest one, a scar on his cheek stretching into a grin. "Need a word with you. A certain gentleman's interested in where you're skulking around."
Lyra didn't answer. She assessed the distance to the nearest drainpipe, to the attic window, to the pile of empty barrels. Fear twisted her stomach into a cold knot.
Rule three: fear — you eat it, don't let it eat you.
She did what they didn't expect. She didn't bolt deeper into the slums; instead, pushing off a barrel, she dug her fingers into the brickwork and climbed. Fast, desperate, her knuckles scraped bloody. The shouts and curses remained below. She emerged onto the rooftops, into the kingdom of wind, pigeons, and her lame companion — the raven, Grey.
The bird sat on the ridge, its black bead-like eye watching her without judgment or pity. Suddenly, Grey cawed, sharply and anxiously, pointing its beak towards the neighboring roof.
Lyra froze. A man stood there.
He was unlike any roof-dweller. A cloak of good, but non-staining wool, boots without holes but worn from the road. Tall, with a frame that felt strong even beneath his clothes. He wasn't hiding. He stood and watched. And his gaze... It was cold, like steel in January, assessing every detail of her appearance — her torn clothes, her bare, dirty feet, her tangled hair. But in that coldness, there was no contempt. There was calculation. And deep in those amber eyes, as if through thick ice, something else glimmered. Unfamiliar. Almost like — understanding.
Lyra's heart beat faster. This wasn't a guardsman. Not one of the Razors' hirelings. This was something new. And in Ebros, new always meant a threat.
Part 3: A Game Without Rules
Carl watched her freeze, becoming part of the landscape — a dirty, beaten part, but an incredibly dangerous one. He saw in her eyes the same fire of survival that had once burned in his best soldiers during a siege. A wildling. Half-child, half-beast. Perfect.
He took a step forward, slow, unhurried. Not closing the distance, but acknowledging his presence.
"Your name is Lyra," he said. His voice was low, firm, without friendliness and without threat. Just a statement. "I'm not from the watch. I'm not one of those who were looking for you today."
The girl didn't move. Only her fingers, hidden in the shadows, clenched something shiny — a shard, a nail, a blade.
"I need your skills," Carl continued, looking directly at her. "Not for theft. For protection."
He saw distrust flicker in her gray eyes, mixed with cynical interest. Protection in her world was an abstraction, a luxury.
"There is a girl," he said, choosing his words carefully. "A little younger than you. She needs a shadow. Eyes and ears that see and hear what guardsmen in polished cuirasses miss. A blade that knows where a backstab might come from."
"Why me?" Her hoarse voice sounded like a creaky, unoiled hinge. There was no childish note in it. Only weariness and defiance.
Carl allowed himself a slight, almost invisible tilt of his head. Good. She asks. That means she's listening.
"Because you survived where others died," he answered honestly. "Because you learned to watch. And I don't need a soldier. I need a ghost with sharp claws."
Slowly, so as not to provoke an explosive reaction, he lowered his hand into his cloak pocket. Lyra instantly tensed, ready to leap into the abyss between the buildings. But he didn't draw a weapon. A small leather pouch. He didn't hold it out. He simply placed it on the sooty tiles between them, like a pawn on a board.
"This isn't charity," Carl's voice took on that particular, time-honed, cool firmness. "This is an advance. A trial."
Lyra didn't take her eyes off him, but her gaze flickered to the pouch for a split second.
"Inside — salt. Cheese. Waxed cloth. And a silver pin. In the shape of a raven," Carl explained. Practical things for survival. And a symbol which, he knew from rumors, meant something to her. "If you can reach the 'Old Oak' inn by the north gate unnoticed by sunset — you'll get the assignment. And another advance. If not..."
He paused, letting the words sink in.
"...then I was mistaken. And we never saw each other."
He turned, his cloak swirling, and walked away along the roof ridge, without looking back. He was leaving her the choice. Control. The most valuable currency in her world. His back was exposed — the final test. Would she throw a shard after him? Lunge for the pouch? Disappear?
He didn't know. But he was betting that hunger — not just for food, but for a chance, for a place — would prove stronger than fear.
Part 4: The First Advance
Lyra waited until his figure dissolved into the evening haze over the rooftops. Then another ten counts, just in case. Only then did she creep, cat-like, up to the pouch. Her fingers, accustomed to dirt and iron, untied the drawstring.
The salt smelled of the sea, which she had only heard of. The cheese was hard, rich, incredibly real. The waxed cloth was sturdy — she could make a wrap, a cover, even improvised shoes from it. And the pin... She picked it up. The silver was cold but quickly warmed in her palm. The raven was carved with a crude elegance, its wing slightly raised, as if in the moment before takeoff.
She clenched the pin in her fist, feeling the point prick her flesh. "Not charity. An advance." No one had ever spoken to her like that. They either threw her a crust or drove her away with kicks. This man... He spoke to her as if she were a tool. And in that, paradoxically, there was respect. He acknowledged her usefulness.
The "Old Oak" inn. North gate. By sunset.
Was it a trap? Possibly. But what difference did it make? Every day in Ebros was a trap. And here was a chance. A chance for more than tomorrow's crust.
She hid the gifts, except for the pin. That she pinned to the inside of her ragged clothes, so the metal pressed against her chest. A sign. A talisman.
A place. A name. These words echoed in that deep, hidden crevice inside her, where the little girl who dreamed of a warm hearth still lived.
She looked around at her rooftops, at the raven Grey, motionlessly watching her. Then she turned and ran, a silent shadow gliding towards the north gate, towards the trial.
At the "Old Oak" inn, Carl sat in a corner of the common room, an unfinished goblet of wine before him. He wasn't drinking. He was waiting. His gaze was distant, but his mind worked at a furious pace, spinning plans, recalling the faces of future enemies, calculating weak points in the system that was meant to swallow his daughter.
He didn't hear footsteps. Didn't see movement in the doorway. He simply felt it — a presence. A change in air pressure, the faintest draft.
Slowly, he lifted his gaze.
In the frame of the open window leading to the dark alley, she stood. Out of breath, even dirtier after the long journey through the city's backstreets, but — here. Her eyes, wide open, looked at him with a mute question and a readiness to vanish at any moment.
She didn't enter. She simply nodded. Once. Briefly and sharply.
Carl Nowenstein, the ninth Earl of Erlenholm, a man who had returned from the grave to rewrite fate, allowed himself a smile. It wasn't a warm, kind smile. It was the expression of cold, cruel satisfaction of a craftsman who has found the perfect steel for his blade.
His first step in this new war was taken.
In the darkness outside the window, on a rotten little balcony opposite, the lame raven Grey silently watched his wildling leave the stone jungle, and watched the mysterious gentleman rise from his table deep in the inn. Somewhere in the lower city, the leader of the Razors was receiving a slap from a man in an expensive but nondescript cloak, who hissed through his teeth: "The girl is gone. Someone... noble took her. Find her. Or your skin will be made into parchment."
The game had begun. And Carl Nowenstein, at last, held his first, long-awaited cards in his hands.