The Weight of the Blade

2

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Who am I?

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Astra stood among the greenery, breathing in the scent of damp earth. For a briefest moment, something inside her settled. Something 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 memories to know that. Some 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 name 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 memories.

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 some point, she had made a choice. A choice to forget. To erase something too hideous to name.

And yet, here she was. Walking the same path. Chasing the same shadows.

Nothing had changed.

Astra pressed the dagger to her palm, watching as red pooled against pale skin. But the pain never came. 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. Some things survive by learning to bend. But surviving isn't thriving, is it? Sometimes," his eyes met on hers, "the strongest still need nurturing to truly flourish.”

She arched a brow. “Is that a botched plant metaphor 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 skimmed the file. Bright red hair. Military cut. Angular face. Strict, but not unhandsome.

“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 time. Sighing became 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.

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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 mentioned 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 pigment of blood could never be hidden.

As if something 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 time. 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 mess. Until they'd found their solution...

"This one's... complex." His voice cut through memory. "We need to trace his connections. Someone 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 someone beyond their reach. Invincible. We just need concrete evidence.”

She exhaled. Another assignment. 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.

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The mission turned out to be more than Astra had bargained for.

Lionel Robin was supposed to be just another name 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 time, 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.

The Van Nassaus owned Alchymia. That alone changed everything.

They weren’t just another dynasty with wealth stretching into eternity. They held power—true power. The kind that ran deeper than money or magic, an invisible hand threading through the veins of nations, shaping policies, shifting economies, deciding who rose and who fell.

The Kingmakers.

Even the Council hesitated to challenge them.

The balance of power had always been an illusion. The Council existed as a failsafe; a counterweight should the Van Nassaus ever decide to rewrite the rules entirely. Never enemies. Never allies. A delicate equilibrium, an unspoken agreement:

The Council kept the world in order, and the Van Nassaus ensured it kept spinning.

Or so it seemed.

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. By any means necessary.

They tried. They failed.

Because Ares Van Nassau? He watched. And he missed nothing.

Was Robin a double agent, a shadow operative working for Ares? The thought explained the almost surgical precision of his influence as it spread across the globe. Had he 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, groomed 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 same.

Weapons. Tools.

Just like Astra.

She adjusted her glasses and zoomed in from her vantage point. Her gaze locked onto Lionel, who, strangely, pretended to walk with a limp. He spoke with a girl, red-haired and crackling with restless energy. His younger sister, most likely. But Astra’s focus didn’t stay on them.

Someone else caught her eye. Not him.

Her.

Pride.

Astra’s heart stopped.

Instinct moved faster than thought. Astra snapped a photo… not of Lionel, but of the girl standing just behind his sister.

The instant her finger pressed the button on her glasses, her body was already in motion. The city blurred around her as she twisted the throttle. An hour later, she arrived at an unassuming 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. Without a word, she dropped her phone onto his desk. The screen still glowed with the image.

Her partner’s hand froze mid-air, tea cooling between his fingers.

“What do you know about her?” she asked.

He didn’t look at the phone immediately. Instead, his eyes searched hers. “You could’ve sent this through our network.”

She dropped into the chair beside him.

“The Council doesn’t need to know.”

Something in her tone made him pause. He wouldn’t ask. But he knew.

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-rimmed glasses.

And yet, Astra knew.

This was what she had been searching for. Or was she just desperate to find meaning in a world that still felt foreign?

Her partner set his porcelain teacup down, expression unreadable. “Are you certain about this, Miss Astra?”

Astra’s gaze remained locked on the girl. “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 exhaled slowly, returning to his screen. “Lionel Robin is a possible double agent for the Van Nassaus, you suspect?”

Astra caught herself before snapping, settling for a raised eyebrow instead. "And you think the Council will actually buy having a double agent in Alchymia? A countermeasure?”

His fingers moved faster now, the glow of the screen casting shifting patterns across his face. Astra watched, her fingers curling as if to summon a dagger.

Sometimes, it appeared before she even willed it to.

Sometimes, she forgot it was there until its chill bit into her skin.

The thought reminded that this body still felt like something borrowed, something 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.

Then—

“Better.” He hit Enter, and a new hologram materialised.

A girl appeared—golden hair, golden eyes, an effortless elegance that felt almost unnatural. But it 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?” He chuckled. “Goddess of Wisdom. Rumor has it she is his favorite.” A pause. “Groomed to be his heiress. One must wonder… what kind of ability she possesses.”

Astra exhaled sharply. “One must wonder? Or the Council must wonder?” Her mind was already working ahead. “Which means they’ll approve this assignment with the right push.”

His smile was small, knowing. “Perhaps… and perhaps we extend this assignment until she graduates. That way, you wouldn’t have to…” his gaze locked onto hers ”…take any other assignments.”

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?”

His voice lowered, “Under one condition.”

Astra rose from her seat, shrugging her leather jacket back on and shoving her hand into her pocket. “And that is?”

His voice was almost pleading. “Promise me you won’t hurt her.”

Astra pulled out a cigarette. The small flame illuminating her face as she brought it to her lips.

Her silence was answer enough. It always had been.

Some promises weren't meant to be made.