Asina had always been a warm city, but I hadn't always lived there. With everything that happened in that place, I didn't end up living that long there, but those times are still valuable to me. Born in Sadina to parents addicted to opium, I wanted my way out as soon as possible, so during a random night I joined the first caravanserai I found out of the city and directed myself to the capital.

Unlike some others looking for opportunities, I did have a certain skill set under my belt. My parents, whilst useless, had been experienced apothecaries. No one taught me that an apothecary shouldn't get high with their merchandise, I had to learn that myself as a child. It was much later that I learned they were assassins.

But those days don't matter now.

Once I reached the capital city of Asina, I had to do some gigs and odd jobs to keep myself with a full stomach, but nothing too egregious. In a way, I had luck. Working as a courier, I found an apothecary needing to deliver some medicine, and after correcting him on the dosage, he found my experience and skills suitable, so he took me in as an assistant.

One thing led to another, and suddenly I found myself in the botanical gardens of the University of Asina. There it is where much of the story took place.

I was nothing more than an assistant to the gardens, but from time to time I talked with scholars, most of the biologists and botanists. There I became friends with a lad younger than me, Karaim. Whilst not exactly a noble, his father was an important landowner so he had sent his son to study the land as he had a passion for plants.

Karaim was an odd fella, but that became truer when my world became mystical.

Following the tradition of most drug dealers being assassins, my mentor resulted in being one. He didn't force me to join any esoteric order, but when you saw a man become a puff of shadow and appear on the other side of the room, you couldn't refuse such arcane powers.

That was when I learned of my parents' status. Not because my mentor personally knew them, but because of my skill. My mentor told me my keenness for Enlightenment was similar to those he called hashashid, born of the hashish. Hashashid could only be born to parents who were constantly high during the whole conception – it didn't have to be hashish, any drug worked – but just being wasted didn't work. Both parents had also to be active assassins using Enlightenment.

It was easy joining the pieces by then, but when my mentor taught me that opium was one of the most useless drugs as it could only produce mediocre flames, I knew my parents were more drug addicts than actual assassins, which infuriated me.

For the following year, I trained myself with the arts of the assassins. Apparently, hashashid were supposed to have reduced mental faculties whilst not on any substance, but my blood was weak enough that I could think just fine without being drugged, but strong enough that I wouldn't get high easily whilst still reaping the rewards of Enlightenment.

Sometimes being a magical bastard is a heavensent.

I orbited around Karaim by that time, not only because I liked the boy – he was only three years younger than me – but because he was knowledgeable. Only sixteen, but he was almost an eminence in what plants were related to. Interested in finding new abilities for Enlightenment, I stalked behind him. Maybe there was a plant that hadn't been proven just yet, but I wasn't going to try random herbs to get high. That kind of recklessness could get you killed.

So slowly and casually, I investigated alongside Karaim. He was interested in making more fertile soils and growing plants faster; I was interested in finding drugs that could give me new powers. That's how found the tremor sense ability granted by peyote that would later be used by all assassins. Karaim was especially interested in the Blood of the Sultanah, the one substance that kept Ydaz's farmlands fertile. One drop of the blood of the ruler could create a new farmland, and he wanted to investigate that.

But our world changed with the apparition of one key individual.

Her name was Aaliyah Asina, princess of the Sultanate of Ydaz, and a great mind interested in all academia-related. Also, only fourteen.

It is curious how if we hadn't interested her back in the day and she would have flung herself to another of her many interests, life could have been different. Not just for us, but for the whole world.

Even with the many holes in my memory, I still remember with utmost clarity how she appeared in our lives.

"What are you doing?" She extravagantly presented herself in the botanical gardens and squatted before a parterre as her eyes moved between us and the plants. Her eyes shone with child-like innocence and wonder, two of the greatest amethysts the world had ever seen.

A simple presentation, not very princess-like, we certainly wouldn't have known she was a princess if it wasn't because she was wearing expensive purple silks, but nonetheless remarkable with its exuding enthusiasm.

Karaim was instantly beholden to her. Of course, a kid would become stricken by a princess, especially one as cute as Aaliyah had been in her young years.

So there we were, three people from three different worlds. All scholars in a way, but all living in different realities. Karaim was a common-ish man, I was an assassin using magic that corrupted the mind, and Aaliyah was a princess. But most importantly, she was a cultivator. Their kind hated mine, and whilst the reasons for it were beyond me, I didn't want to get caught in the crossfire.

It took her a lot of time to find out what I was though.

Aaliyah wasn't like other sultanzade – children of the Sultanah – as most were lavish and hedonistic, but that princess had an interest in the natural world like any other. She would boast of her intelligence and how she would learn the imperial magic in the future from time to time, but she also admitted her mistakes when she was wrong in a debate and learned from there.

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That was mostly attributed to her passion for education. Whenever she was in the university, it was either in the botanical gardens with us or in some lecture. She thought that fostering the mind was the greatest thing that could be done to a person, and took it as a duty as a princess of Ydaz to show that to the world.

How such a lovely, passionate, and intelligent girl became the biggest monster the world had seen is beyond me, even if I was present in those early steps.

Our life in the botanical gardens was simple but entertaining. Karaim would come up with theories, Aaliyah using her intelligence and resources as a sultanzade would prove or deny them, and I would be there keeping them company and helping them. Sometimes I question if my presence was what caused the Ydazi harem to exist. Maybe we could have had a sultan, and his name would have been Karaim-al-Ydaz.

I was well aware I was a third wheel but considering both of them were a handful of years younger than me and didn't understand what they had until they were much older, they never realized the nuisance I was.

Those were beautiful and cozy days, but like any remembrance, it was bound to find a crack. And the first one that cracked was Aaliyah.

We didn't know how, but one day, Aaliyah came to us differently. Changed. Her gaze was dead, and her voice lacked the enthusiasm she usually had.

"Are you fine?" Karaim asked back then.

"Y-yes," and she answered softly.

But my eyes were focused on the bruises on her body and hints of extreme sunburnt, hidden with subtle layers of make-up. Especially those in her fingers. Something had happened, and someone had apparently cracked her fingers. Repeatedly at that.

Perhaps my people wouldn't be persecuted now if I had been more accommodating to little Aaliyah if I had been a support to her instead of just keeping my thoughts to myself. But I was also young and stupid back then, and she was a princess and a cultivator, bound to be my enemy at some point, I told myself.

That prophecy was only fulfilled because I willed it into existence.

But if I had noticed all of that had happened on her fifteenth birthday, I am sure I could have changed fate.

It took her a few days, maybe weeks, to open up and reveal to us that she had been taught the imperial magic. But she had only revealed to us that once we discovered she had been whoring herself out. In any other place, it would have been unthinkable to see a princess whoring herself out, but we were in Ydaz. Our culture, religion, and lore told us that the sultanzade were promiscuous and sought the pleasures of the flesh.

But we knew Aaliyah.

Whilst not exactly shy, she was no whore. She probably wasn't interested in the slightest with the body, only with the mind. Yet another window for me to have exploited, to have helped her, but back then I just assumed she was as hedonistic as the rest of the sultanzade.

Aaliyah didn't tell us much, only that the magic of the sultanzade had to do with the body and that she needed to do this, to understand the body. I needed no Enlightenment to tell she was not being fully honest, but that was enough for Karaim, he even offered himself as some sort of test subject, but Aaliyah declined. She said she couldn't do that to him.

But she did something in the end, she managed to get us a precious sample of the Blood of the Sultanah.

Karaim's passion for the plants grew to a fervor, he believed he was close to a heavenly revelation. But I won't deny I was passionate about that too. We extended the use of that blood to the utmost limit, scrapping for the most utility out of that small sample.

We discovered that not only did the blood turn infertile soil into fertile lands, but it also made plants grow faster and more nutritional. That translated especially well with my drugs as a potted plant of cannabis I grew ended up producing a specimen of hashish more powerful than anything I had consumed before. Well, until Karaim perfected his research many years later.

But our greatest discovery was that of vital energy, or as it was called by the cultivators, vitality. I had known of its existence for a long time as Enlightenment used that energy as a fuel, but I didn't have a name for it. We, the assassins, didn't have a name for it as it was more of an afterthought. We didn't spend vitality, nor did we need to store it like the cultivators, it was a… parallel product to our magic.

And that slip got out of my lips. My memory is foggy about that exact moment, but we all three were discussing our findings and my tongue was a bit too loose, perhaps because of that empowered hashish. But anyhow, I ended up revealing my station as a hashashid.

That made Aaliyah furious, she felt betrayed as she had made it very clear she was a cultivator. But at the same time, she was still that inquisitive mind from always, so she stayed with us, even if that wonder from her eyes was fading away with each rumor we heard about her lying with a new person. Sultanzade doesn't discriminate between genders, after all.

Now that the secrets were mostly out, we focused ourselves on discovering these vital arts as we had called them now that there were two of them. The magic of the assassins and the imperials were interconnected we could tell that, Aaliyah and I, even if we left Karaim mostly in the dark. And even after being blocked with many secrets, it was he who made most discoveries. He was working with the incomplete puzzle, but he was the most competent of us.

Thanks to him I developed a whole theory about the purity of the material used for Enlightenment, but also of the right dosage for every assassin. It may seem trivial in hindsight, but everybody's body is different, so every person required the right doses to make the most out of Enlightenment. I was the first person to discover that, and only because a farmer who was a bit too interested in plants helped me.

Karaim was rejoiced with that, but Aaliyah didn't like it. Perhaps it was because my magic required me to taint the mind – something she valued far more than her body – or perhaps because I was an assassin and she a cultivator. I should have asked, really.

Our relationship was becoming more and more strained with the weeks until it became impossible to sustain after a few months. Aaliyah was no longer a young princess with no merits, but a recognized scholar throughout the whole country. Only in Ydaz could you be one of the brightest minds at that age whilst having bedded people in the hundreds.

Not wanting our relationship to come to light, Aaliyah gave me an offer. Should I leave for Sadina at once, she wouldn't kill me. Truth be told, it was quite an attractive offer. I didn't have anything tying me to Asina besides those two, and I didn't want to make the Sultanate an enemy out of me.

So I left.

Though I grabbed Karaim on the way out. And, oh boy, Aaliyah didn't like that.

Our farewell was a curious one. Aaliyah held the honor of the offer even if I was taking Karaim with me as his investigation could be beneficial to the future of Enlightenment, and she didn't kill me on the spot. But as we exchanged farewells, something happened. Aaliyah and Karaim kissed, a lover's kiss at that even if they weren't much so, but Karaim collapsed to the ground, exhausted with a deathly white skin.

"My last gift to you," Karaim had said.

Something changed within Aaliyah at that moment. Not only a change of heart but also of will. Her eyes rekindled with the same potency that when they had met her, though instead of wonder, they were now filled with fire.

"I cannot let you go without a present now," Aaliyah responded to the perilously white Karaim. She gave him her purse, which was brimming with gold as the princess she was. "This is but the first one of my presents. As for my other one, I hereby grant you the accolade of Ayad."

"What?" The exhausted boy exhaled. To explain what had happened there, Aaliyah granted Karaim a knighthood, in a way, making him a real noble, even if those accolades were just only word of mouth.

And that was that. We bid our farewells and then we left her alone, and free to kill her mother and two-thirds of her family a few years later. Wholesome stuff.

But that would be her story, not mine.

Oh right, she also kicked me in the balls before we departed. Daughter of a whore.