Four months in the subterranean freezing caverns had turned my ten-year-old body into a lean, lethal machine.
My fractured collarbone and crushed ribs were long knitted together, reinforced by Shaman Orok’s sulfur-bear marrow and my hyper-mutating dragon blood.
The rune-carved frost-hide blindfold sat permanently over my eyes, humming softly as it channeled my Sovereign’s Guilt Eyes into a precise, acoustic map of the world.
I sat on a stone ledge in the upper cavern, whittling down the ends of my heavy ironwood bo staff, while Wren floated lazily beside my head, picking her phantom teeth with a wisp of shadow.
’So, partner,’ Wren purred, her eyes glittering with dark amusement.
’The Frost-Tooth scouts brought back the fresh intel. Garren’s Sec branch remnants are holed up in the Iron-Spire Fortress at the edge of the dead zone. They’re running low on supplies, and Garren’s paying his mercenary captains with stolen Medeis soul-gems.’
"A cornered rat with a bag of gold," I murmured, testing the balance of the ironwood staff on one finger.
"He thinks he’s waiting for the winter solstice to finish his abyssal ritual. He thinks he’s the hunter."
’And what are we?’
A dark, dangerously devious smile touched my lips behind the rune-carved blindfold.
"We’re the ones who are going to scam him out of his gold, break his mercenary army from the inside, and make him pay for every single stone he broke in my bedroom."
Kaelen stepped onto the ledge, throwing a heavy leather sack filled with black iron coins and silver scout rings onto the floor between us.
She was taller now, her bronze-green frame filled out with dense muscle, her twin bone bludgeons strapped to her waist.
"My father’s scouts intercepted a Sec branch supply convoy in the southern ravine," Kaelen grunted, wiping a streak of black grease off her jaw.
"The mercenaries Garren hired—the Blood-Hound Vanguard—are getting restless. Garren hasn’t paid them their monthly retainer because Alexis locked down the Sanguis clan bank vaults."
"Which means their morale is at absolute rock bottom," I noted smoothly, poking one of the silver rings with the tip of my staff.
"They’re fighting for money, not Garren’s abyssal mad dream."
"Father wants to launch a full frontal assault on the fortress tomorrow," Kaelen said, leaning against the cavern wall and looking at me with a mix of frustration and intrigue.
"He thinks we can crush them with raw barbarian force. But you look like you’re about to do something horribly unethical."
"Unethical?" I feigned offense, adjusting my rune-carved blindfold.
"Kaelen, I’m a dead boy. I don’t exist. Why waste your father’s warriors in a bloody siege when we can make Garren’s own mercenaries tie him up and hand him to us on a silver platter?"
Kaelen blinked, her golden eyes widening as she looked at me.
"You... you’re going to bribe the mercenaries?"
"Bribe them? No," I chuckled softly, my past-life gamer instincts flaring to life.
"I’m going to run the greatest scam the Northern Marches have ever seen."
That night, at the edge of the Iron-Spire Fortress, a heavy snowstorm blanketed the jagged peaks.
On the outer perimeter watchtower, two Blood-Hound mercenaries stood shivering in heavy furs, their hands wrapped tightly around their spears.
"Garren’s fucking crazy," one mercenary grumbled, spitting into the snow.
"He’s down in the lower vaults chanting abyssal gibberish while we freeze to death. And now the Sanguis core family has put a five-hundred-thousand gold bounty on his head."
"We can’t claim it," the second mercenary muttered bitterly.
"Lady Vespera said anyone wearing the Sec branch insignia gets executed on sight. We’re trapped here—"
THUD.
A heavy, leather-bound chest dropped out of the whiteout blizzard, landing squarely between the two guards with a dull, metallic clink.
The guards froze, drawing their blades.
"Who’s there?!"
Through the swirling snow stepped a small figure wrapped in a dark, fur-lined cloak.
His face was covered by a thick, rune-carved leather blindfold, and he held a simple, heavy ironwood staff rested lightly across his shoulders.
Beside him stood Kaelen, her bone bludgeons ready, radiating an intimidating, predatory aura.
"Greetings, gentlemen," I spoke, my voice calm, pleasant, and entirely out of place in a war zone.
"I hear you’re having payroll issues."
"Kids?!" the first guard gasped, his eyes dropping to the leather chest.
"Where the hell did you come from? Kill them—"
Before he could raise his spear, I shifted my weight onto my lead foot, using the Frost-Tooth Low Glide to close a ten-foot gap in a fraction of a second.
I didn’t use a drop of blood-mana.
CRACK!
The blunt end of my ironwood staff struck the precise nerve cluster beneath his armpit, instantly deadening his arm and causing his spear to clatter onto the snow.
In the same fluid motion, I pivoted off my hip, leveraging the staff’s momentum to sweep his partner’s legs out from under him.
THUD!
In less than three seconds, both guards were lying in the snow, breathless, disarmed, and thoroughly terrified.
I leaned on my staff, resting one foot casually on the chest of the lead guard.
"Now, let’s talk business."
"Who... who are you?" the guard wheezed, staring in horror at the blindfolded child stepping on his ribs with zero effort.
"I’m the ghost of the seventh child," I smiled, flicking the lid of the leather chest open with the tip of my boot.
Inside sat fifty sparkling, high-tier Medeis Soul-Gems—stolen directly from Garren’s captured supply wagon—and a sealed letter bearing Princess Solene’s Imperial Sun Seal stamp.
The guards gasped.
High-tier soul-gems were worth a fortune on the black market, and an imperial seal meant absolute immunity from the law.
"Here is my offer," I said, leaning down so the guard could hear the razor-sharp edge in my voice.
"You take these gems and pass them to your Mercenary Commander. Tell him that the ’dead’ Valerian Sanguis offers the Blood-Hound Vanguard full imperial pardons and double their contract pay..."
I leaned closer, my voice dropping into a whispered venom.
"...if you poison Garren’s guards during the midnight watch, disable the fortress defensive barriers, and open the eastern gate for the Frost-Tooth warriors."
The guard swallowed hard, looking at the shiny soul-gems, then at the royal imperial wax seal, and finally at my unreadable, blindfolded face.
"And... and if we refuse?" the guard trembled.
I didn’t answer with words.
Instead, I unlocked a microscopic fraction of my dragon core, letting a tiny thread of superheated, ancient dragon pressure leak through the runes of my leather blindfold.
The air around us instantly spiked to boiling temperatures, melting the snow within a ten-foot radius into steam.
Kaelen grinned behind me, stepping forward and cracking her knuckles with a brutal, thunderous pop.
"If you refuse," Kaelen purred, her yellow eyes burning in the snow, "we don’t just kill you. We let the dragon-boy eat your core."
The guard’s eyes almost burst out of his sockets.
"WE ACCEPT! WE ACCEPT!"
An hour later, Kaelen and I sat on a high ridge overlooking the Iron-Spire Fortress, watching through the blizzard as the mercenary watchmen frantically dragged the chest of soul-gems into the main barracks.
Kaelen turned to me, shaking her head in utter disbelief.
"You didn’t pay them a single copper of your own money," Kaelen said, her mouth agape.
"You used Garren’s stolen soul-gems to pay his own mercenaries to betray him... and you forged the Princess’s wax seal using candle tallow and a copper ring!"
"A real mastermind doesn’t spend his own capital when he can use his enemy’s," I replied smoothly, twirling my ironwood staff with one hand.
"The mercenaries get fake imperial promises, Garren gets betrayed, your father gets an open gate, and we get to walk in completely fresh."
’I love this kid,’ Wren cackled, rolling around in my shadows like a delighted cat.
’He’s an absolute menace! The southern nobles thought they were dealing with a fragile dud... they created a monster!’
I stood up at the edge of the cliff, the northern wind whipping through my dark cloak, my rune-carved leather blindfold glowing faintly as my acoustic perception mapped out the fortress defenses falling apart from the inside.
"Come on, Kaelen," I said, a cold, ruthless spark igniting inside my dragon core.
"The gates are opening. It’s time to collect Elder Garren’s head."