The Weight of the Blade
2
Who am I?
Astra stood among the greenery, breathing in the scent of damp earth. For a briefest mont, sothing inside her settled. Sothing that almost felt… human.
Or close enough.
Soft rain pattered against the leaves, tracing idle paths down their dark surfaces. She had always enjoyed this. She didn’t need mories to know that. So truths didn't need the past to validate them.
Comfort. Familiarity.
But without her past, who was she? Could a person exist without the weight of their own history? Or was she just…
Empty?
At least one thing remained certain: She wanted this feeling.
She didn’t deserve it.
Regret coiled in her chest. She could na it now. The revulsion at what she’d done, the quiet disgust that wrapped around her throat. But naming it changed nothing.
Killer. That's what she was.
A diamond dagger materialised in her hand, its weight almost laughable. So light, it felt like nothing at all. Her abilities made her exceptional. Unmatched. Perfect.
A perfect weapon doesn't need mories.
Deadlier than the dagger she now examined, its edges sharp enough to carve through bone, through flesh, through—
Lives. It was easy. Like breathing. Like existing.
Deep down, perhaps she had always known. Perhaps, at so point, she had made a choice. A choice to forget. To erase sothing too hideous to na.
And yet, here she was. Walking the sa path. Chasing the sa shadows.
Nothing had changed.
Astra pressed the dagger to her palm, watching as red pooled against pale skin. But the pain never ca. She let out a quiet laugh.
A monster’s blood is still just blood. Red and reeking of iron.
She didn’t need the past to define her, not when the truth was so simple. A killer remains a killer.
Because of that, she had let Pride slip away, going through lives with no real purpose. Surviving, but not truly living. Lives flowed around her like fading footprints in the rain, disappearing with each step.
Click.
Except for one. Infuriating persistent.
“Good morning, Miss Astra. Lovely day, isn’t it?”
She exhaled slowly, still not looking up. She flicked the dagger, pruning a young inflorescence before it could bear flowers. She moved on, slicing off crisped edges, cutting away dead leaves. Each cut exact.
Controlled.
He tilted an umbrella to shield her. A habit by now. “These plants are better suited for a greenhouse. They’re tropical.”
“Ah, yes,” Astra muttered. “Even plants aren’t spared from human control.”
“We can help them,” he replied, his free hand slipping inside his coat. “Without magic, at least. The least we can do after uprooting them.”
She cut through another dead leaf. “They’ll adapt. Learn to survive the frost.”
“Survive?” His voice softened, stopping her hand just as her dagger hovered over another brittle leaf. He pried her fingers open gently and began bandaging her cut.
“That's exactly my point, Miss Astra. So things survive by learning to bend. But surviving isn't thriving, is it? Sotis," his eyes t on hers, "the strongest still need nurturing to truly flourish.”
She arched a brow. “Is that a botched plant taphor or a cryptic lecture?”
He only smiled. There it was again, that quiet warmth in his actions. That persistent concern. She never knew what to do with it. Where to put it. How to hold it without crushing it.
So, she did what she always did. She let go. Pulled her hand back. “Another mission?”
“Unfortunately.” He handed her the file with a sigh. “Rogue agent. Classified intel. Council wants you on it.”
She skimd the file. Bright red hair. Military cut. Angular face. Strict, but not unhandso.
“Lionel Robin.” Her voice barely stirred the air. “Is this a capture mission or…” Her fingers dug into the file’s edge. “Elimination?”
He sighed again, slower this ti. Sighing beca him.
But the hesitation in his eyes told her everything before he even spoke: guilt. How Astra had ended up as a Council agent—that was still his greatest regret.
Tony set everything in motion while she was unconscious. He had spilled everything to the police before her partner could reach him.
He had tried, and failed, to purge the system before the report was logged, backed up, and sent straight to the Council’s headquarters in New York.
Physical copies. Far harder to erase.
At least he’d managed to scrub her image from the surveillance footage before the police could secure a warrant. The official reports only ntioned a silver-haired woman with crimson eyes.
But even that was too much.
She had tried disguises. Dyes. Anything to make herself less… her. But the silver strands refused to hold colour, as if rejecting the very idea of deception. Her eyes burned through the contact lenses, as if the pignt of blood could never be hidden.
As if sothing inside her refused to be erased.
And the Council wouldn’t let her walk free. A newly awakened Gifted was rare. Awakening this late? Impossible. Or it should have been.
They would study her. Take her apart. Find out what had ignited her powers after all this ti. The Council had burned through fortunes chasing that secret: how to force dormant abilities awake in the ordinary.
So she had run. And he had tried to clean up the ss. Until they'd found their solution...
"This one's... complex." His voice cut through mory. "We need to trace his connections. Soone powerful is pulling strings."
His hand twitched toward his hair, stopping short. A habit he still couldn’t kill.
“Powerful?” Astra raised an eyebrow. “So this is just an investigation?”
He nodded. “The Council suspects the buyer is soone beyond their reach. Invincible. We just need concrete evidence.”
She exhaled. Another assignnt. Another job. This one might not stain her hands. At least, not permanently.
Astra flipped the dagger, watching light splinter across its facets before it dissolved to diamond dust. A single drop of blood hung suspended, then joined the rain below.
Washed away like everything else.
The mission turned out to be more than Astra had bargained for.
Lionel Robin was supposed to be just another na in a long list of targets. But he was careful, more careful than most. The chase had dragged her through New York, China, Budapest. Each ti, she arrived just a step too late.
Until Alchymia. A ghost of a territory buried in a continent the world pretended didn’t exist.
But Robin hadn’t just run there. He had been summoned. And she could already deduce who was behind it.
The Van Nassaus owned Alchymia. That alone changed everything.
They weren’t just another private family with more wealth than the 99%. They held power—true power. Quiet influence that threaded through policy, economics, and politics.
They didn’t rule nations. They decided who did.
The Kingmakers.
Every country had its figurehead, soone for the public to admire or despise, but behind nearly every throne stood an unseen force, and in this case, it was a single family: the Van Nassaus. Even the Council hesitated whenever the Van Nassaus stepped into the room.
The balance of power had always been an illusion. The Council existed as a failsafe—a counterweight in case the Van Nassaus ever decided to rewrite the rules completely. They were never enemies, nor were they allies. There was an unspoken agreent between them:
The Council kept the world in order, and the Van Nassaus ensured it kept spinning.
Or so it seed.
In truth, that illusion was beginning to crack, giving rise to factions of vigilantes; those who saw the system for what it was and sought to correct it. And by any ans necessary.
They tried.
They failed.
Because Ares Van Nassau was always watching and never missed a thing.
Was Robin a double agent, a shadow operative working for Ares? Had Ares even reached into the Council itself, corrupting an Agent?
And it led her here.
St. Kevin’s. A prestigious academy designed to cultivate the world’s future leaders. But it wasn’t just an institution for prodigies. They were assets, grood for power, courted by both the Council and The Van Nassaus. And they got to choose.
But without power—not magic, not talents, but true power—everyone ended up the sa.
Weapons.
Tools.
Just like Astra.
She adjusted her glasses and zood in from her vantage point. Her gaze locked onto Lionel, who was pretending to walk with a limp. He worked behind a desk at the Council, but during her pursuit, Astra had already discovered there was nothing wrong with his legs.
She caught him speaking with an animated red-haired girl who was likely his younger sister, but Astra’s attention didn’t linger on them for long.
Soone else caught her eye.
Her.
Pride.
Astra’s heart stopped.
Instinct moved faster than thought, and she snapped a photo of the girl standing just behind his sister; the mont her finger pressed the button on her glasses, she was already walking away.
The city blurred around her as she twisted the throttle. An hour later, she arrived at a safehouse just outside Alchymia City. She barely slowed as she punched in the passcode. Her combat boots struck the squeaky timber floor as she stepped in.
Astra dropped her phone onto his desk. The screen still glowed with the image.
Her partner froze, a porcelain cup paused in his hands.
“What do you know about her?” she asked.
He didn’t look at the phone imdiately, his eyes searching hers instead. “You could’ve sent this through our network.”
She dropped into the chair beside him.
“The Council doesn’t need to know.”
Sothing in her tone made him pause. Astra knew she didn’t have to say anything more, because he already understood.
His fingers moved smoothly over the keyboard. “Eydis Von Apfelhof. Scholarship student at St. Kevin’s. Intelligent, promising.” He hesitated, glancing at Astra before adding, “And young. She’s sixteen. I don’t think she’s—”
“We both know age can be deceiving.” Astra leaned closer to the hologram, her voice laced with ice.
Amber eyes stared back at her.
She looked like Pride.
Except younger. Except… her eyes weren’t gold. Where Astra expected the intoxicating presence of a Sin, there was only a quiet, awkward girl hiding behind thick-rimd glasses.
And yet, Astra knew.
This was what she had been searching for. Or was she just desperate to find aning in a world that still felt foreign?
He set his porcelain teacup down, expression unreadable. “Are you certain about this, Miss Astra?”
“Is she Gifted?”
“No records of abilities. The Council has nothing on her.”
“That’s not good enough.” Her jaw clenched. “I need answers. Can you get them?”
He returned to his screen, letting out a resigned sigh. “Lionel Robin is a possible double agent for the Van Nassaus, you suspect?”
Astra caught herself before snapping. "And you think the Council will actually buy having a double agent in Alchymia? A counterasure?”
His hands moved faster now. Astra watched, her fingers curling as if to summon a dagger.
Sotis, it appeared before she even willed it to.
Sotis, she forgot it was there until its chill bit into her skin.
The thought reminded that this body still felt like sothing borrowed, sothing that didn’t quite belong to her. She flexed her hand, suppressing the urge, willing herself to stay present. The effort drained her more than it should have.
“Better.” He hit Enter, and a new hologram materialised.
A girl appeared—golden hair, golden eyes, an effortless elegance that felt almost unnatural. But she wasn’t Pride.
“The Van Nassaus rarely send their children to St. Kevin’s due to the Council’s influence over the school,” he said. “But Athena Van Nassau enrolled on her own.”
“Athena? Is she Ares’s daughter?”
“Too obvious? Goddess of Wisdom. Rumor has it she is his favorite.” He paused. “Grood to be his heiress. One must wonder… what kind of ability she possesses.”
“One must wonder? Or the Council must wonder?” Her mind was already working ahead. “Which ans they’ll approve this assignnt with the right push.”
“Perhaps… and perhaps we extend this assignnt until she graduates. That way, you wouldn’t have to…” His gaze locked onto hers ”…take any other assignnts.”
Astra’s fingers instinctively relaxed.
“Besides,” he continued, “your appearance will make it easy for you to blend in as just another Gifted student. The Council won’t object to assigning you there. Given what you’ve uncovered, this is the perfect opportunity to not only gather insight into Ares’s plans but also to integrate yourself with his daughter.”
A thoughtful pause, he added, “I hope you find what you’re looking for. But Astra—”
The formality slipped away. She knew that tone.
“She might just be a coincidence. A lookalike.”
Astra had already made up her mind. “Can you make us roommates?”
“Under one condition.”
Astra rose from her seat, shrugging her leather jacket back on and shoving her hand into her pocket. “And that is?”
“Promise you won’t hurt her.”
Astra pulled out a cigarette. The small fla illuminating her face as she brought it to her lips.
Her silence was answer enough. It always had been.
So promises weren't ant to be made.
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