The Crimson Contract

The tavern’s door groaned open, dragging a cold wind behind it. All conversation stilled. A stranger entered, tall and cloaked in midnight blue, silver embroidery gleaming faintly like spider silk in moonlight. Beneath the hood, sharp gray eyes scanned the room with mechanical calm.

“Who’s that?” someone whispered.

“Bounty hunter,” another murmured, voice tight with dread. “Works for the Crimson Contract.”

At the mention of the name, even the fire in the hearth seemed to flicker uneasily.

The stranger approached the bar, drawing a thin scroll from their cloak. They laid it flat, revealing a wax seal in the shape of a bloodied fang.

“I’m here for Corwin Vale,” they said.

A collective gasp rippled through the tavern.

“No one’s seen Corwin in years,” the barkeep stammered. “He vanished after the Siege of Halridge.”

“Then it shouldn’t take long to find him,” the bounty hunter said, voice devoid of malice or mercy. They turned, letting the scroll roll back up with a whisper. “Tell him Kael Rythe is looking.”

Corwin Vale sat in the upper loft of a crumbling watchtower, overlooking the mist-choked forest that separated him from the world he’d forsaken. His beard was gray now, but his eyes still burned with a haunted youth—memories of fire, betrayal, and the pact that had nearly cost him his soul.

He had once been one of the Crimson Contract’s finest assassins. An elite guild operating outside kingdoms, governments, or morality. They dealt only in absolutes. Once a name was inked in crimson, it was a death sentence.

Corwin had signed his own name.

It had been a desperate choice—one made to protect his daughter after a rival noble had placed a price on her head. He’d asked the Contract for protection. In return, he owed them one final kill: the noble who had orchestrated the attack.

He had done it. But the Contract never forgot a signature.

He fled, hoping the ink would fade with time.

It hadn’t.

Kael Rythe moved like a shadow through the trees. Not born, but made. Trained from the age of seven, disciplined to silence, obedience, and death. Their arm bore the ritual scar of the Contract—the thin, red serpent that wrapped three times around the forearm.

But Kael was different. Not just a killer—they were an executor of terms, a final reckoning. And this was personal. Corwin Vale had been their mentor once, before he disappeared.

The betrayal cut deeper than any blade.

It was just after midnight when Kael reached the watchtower. No torches lit, but they knew Corwin was there. They circled once, silent, then stepped through the broken door.

Corwin was waiting at the top, crossbow in hand.

“I wondered when they’d send you,” he said, not aiming it. “Didn’t think it would be you, though.”

“I volunteered,” Kael replied.

“I taught you better than this.”

“You taught me the Contract comes before blood.”

Corwin set the crossbow down gently. “Then finish it. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

Kael hesitated.

“You trained me in every trick, every tactic,” Kael said. “So why stay here? No traps, no escape, no plea. Why now?”

Corwin walked to the edge of the loft. The forest stretched endlessly below, a blanket of whispering secrets. “Because I’m tired. Because I’ve spent ten years running from a name written in red. And because maybe, just maybe, I believe you deserve to know the truth.”

Kael’s eyes narrowed. “What truth?”

“The Contract didn’t want just the noble dead,” Corwin said. “They wanted the entire family erased. Wife. Child. Even the servants. Collateral, they called it.”

“That’s not possible,” Kael said, voice colder than the wind. “We don’t kill children.”

“We do,” Corwin whispered. “We just don’t call them children in the ledgers.”

Kael took a step back.

“I completed the mission, but I didn’t kill them all. I smuggled the child out. A girl. She’d done nothing, and I couldn’t—wouldn’t—follow that order.”

Kael’s heart was pounding now.

“She lived?” they asked.

Corwin nodded. “Last I heard, she became a healer in the Northern Reach. Maybe she still believes the world can be mended.”

Kael stared at Corwin for a long time.

“I need to bring back a death,” Kael said, fingers slowly pulling a black-bladed dagger from their belt. “But the Contract never specified it had to be yours.”

Corwin blinked. “What?”

Kael cut their own palm. Blood welled and dripped onto the floor. With swift motion, they smeared it in the shape of a broken serpent—the symbol of severance.

“I’m done,” Kael said.

“You—you’ll be hunted.”

Kael smiled faintly. “You survived ten years. I only need one.”

They turned and walked into the mist, leaving Corwin standing in stunned silence.

Days later, a sealed scroll arrived at the Crimson Contract’s black vault.

It bore Kael Rythe’s seal.

Inside: a death writ. Red ink. One name.

Kael Rythe.

Below it, in smaller letters:

“This is my resignation.”

The wax seal cracked in the candlelight. For the first time in a decade, the blood ledger hesitated before writing back.