A Blade for Her Name Part 1

Vaelin knew something was wrong the moment the birds stopped singing.

It wasn’t silence that warned him. Silence could be comforting. This was a pause in the world, like the forest itself was holding its breath.

He stood just outside the cabin, sharpening a blade more out of habit than need. A nightsteel-edged dagger from his old life, the kind of weapon that hummed faintly when drawn against a whetstone. Its edge had already tasted a dozen blood oaths, some broken, some fulfilled. He was halfway through a final pass when the wind shifted—not with chill, but with weight. Like memory wrapped in fog.

The pine branches swayed, whispering above. One shutter on the east-facing wall creaked, though no breeze followed.

And then it was there. Sitting neatly at the cabin’s threshold.

A thick envelope. Brown-stained, road-worn. Its corners crisp, despite the damp in the air. No courier in sight. No sound of approach.

Vaelin bent, slowly, as if proximity might make it vanish—or worse, ignite.

The seal caught the light of the rising sun. Black wax, glossy and thick as blood. Stamped into it, a symbol from another life: a circle of four nested eyes, pupil-less, eternal.

The sigil of the Hollow Pact.

He hadn’t seen it in ten years. Not since he left their order by spilling the blood of his handler across a frozen altar and walking away without a word.

But what stole his breath wasn’t the seal.

It was the name carved into the wax. Not scrawled, not written—carved, with an assassin’s precision.

Five letters. Her name. Elira’s true name.

Not the name the world knew. Not the one he whispered to calm her dreams or tease her after battle. This was older. Hidden beneath layers of arcane spellwork, buried with purpose—because someone had tried to erase her.

And they’d failed.

Scrawled below it, in the Pact’s coded script:

You owe her this.

Inside, Elira was brewing tea with a spellfire flame, the silver-blue fire licking beneath the iron kettle. She sat cross-legged by the hearth, her spellblade resting against the stone, hair braided back tight—a holdover from their last skirmish in the frozen north. Her mouth moved silently, tracing the contours of a ward sigil she was designing from memory.

She didn’t notice him at first. Not until the door closed behind him with deliberate care.

Her head turned slightly, brows twitching in thought. “You’re quiet.”

“I’m thinking.”

“That’s dangerous.”

Her voice carried that ever-present edge of dry wit. He normally welcomed it. This time, he didn’t respond.

Elira blinked once, turning fully toward him. Her eyes landed on the envelope in his hand—and her breath caught. Just a hitch. But for her, that was a scream.

She stood slowly. Her fingers twitched as if reaching for a blade, but stopped. “Where did you get that?”

“It was at the door,” he said quietly.

“No footsteps?”

“No sound.”

“Shit,” she whispered. She stepped forward, reaching out—but froze when she saw the name on the seal.

Her expression fractured. Not with panic. Not with fear. But with something older. Something burned in.

“That’s not my name,” she said. Her voice was a rasp now. “But it is.”

She touched the seal. Just touched it. The ward etched along her collarbone—an ancient glyph meant to protect her identity—flared beneath her skin. Vaelin saw it pulse once, through the edge of her shirt.

She opened the letter. Her movements were precise, surgical. Like a surgeon peeling back flesh to find a buried blade.

Inside: nothing. A blank sheet. No ink. No runes. No spell.

But the message had already been sent.

They didn’t speak much after that. Elira packed in silence. Not out of anger, but focus. She moved like someone reclaiming an old identity and choosing what pieces to keep.

Outside, Vaelin mapped the routes in the dirt. He used his dagger tip to draw:

A winding river between broken hills.

The shattered caldera known as Gharad's Spine, where a fortress of rune-stone and mage-chained metal marked the tyrant’s stronghold.

The ruins of Elnar’s sanctuary, where Elira and dozens of other mageborn children were hidden two decades ago.

And at the edge, an X where the Hollow Pact once convened—in a chapel deep in the Iron Boughs, long since swallowed by moss and silence.

Their trail pointed toward Gharad’s Spine.

Toward him.

That evening, at a clearing near the river’s edge, they camped beneath ironbark trees. The fire crackled low, just enough to push back the mist creeping in from the valley.

Elira sat cross-legged again, a bowl of stew cradled in her hands. She hadn’t eaten more than a few bites.

Vaelin crouched across from her. He unsheathed a smaller blade—his ledger knife. Short, triangular, engraved with the sigils of the Pact. A weapon meant not to kill, but to mark.

Elira eyed it. Her voice was tired, but sharp. “If you say you want to carve his name in it, don’t bother. You already did that when you let him live.”

Vaelin didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached into his pack and pulled out something older than the knife: the assassin’s ledger.

A leather-bound book, worn and brittle, its pages brittle with age and inked names. Some crossed out. Some blood-marked. The currency of a life he no longer paid into.

He opened to a blank page.

And with careful strokes, he carved a single name—not in the list of targets, but in the center of the page.

Elira’s true name.

He did not carve it as an order.

He carved it as a vow.

She stared. Not at him. At the name.

“Why?” she asked.

He didn’t look up. “Because you’ve hidden this part of yourself long enough. And because whoever did this wants to own it. Claim it.”

Her voice was quieter now. “And you?”

“I don’t want to own it. I want you to choose it.”

The silence between them was thick, like the moment before thunder.

Then she leaned across the fire.

And kissed him.

Not softly. Not urgently.

But with steady, fierce pressure. The kind of kiss that didn’t ask for permission—but didn’t take, either. It promised.

When she pulled away, her eyes lingered on the name.

“Then I choose it,” she whispered. “But only because you didn’t.”

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All Parts of the Series

A Blade for Her Name Part 1

A Blade for Her Name Part 2

A Blade for Her Name Part 3

A Blade for Her Name Part 4

A Blade for Her Name Part 5