Purpose

The room was too small.

Cassin sat on the edge of the narrow cot, his elbows resting on his knees, hands dangling between them. Dawn had not yet broken, but sleep had abandoned him hours ago. The inn's walls pressed in around him, the air thick with the scent of mildew and old straw. Outside, the town of Velsford was still silent, wrapped in the kind of quiet that only came in the hours when even the drunkards had stumbled home and the workers had not yet risen.

He stared at the token in his palm. The black iron disc glinted dully in the faint light creeping through the shuttered window. A crescent moon. A dagger through its heart.

Who had sent the man in black?

The question gnawed at him, a rat chewing through the bones of his sanity. But beneath it lay something deeper, something far more corrosive.

Why had he been able to do nothing?

The answer was simple. He had been weak.

Weakness had defined his entire life. It was why his mother had burned. Why he had been thrown into the pits. Why Eira had died. The world had carved this truth into his flesh over and over, and still, he had refused to see it.

But now, there was no denying it. Life had not shaped him into a survivor. It had shaped him into a damned one.

A bitter laugh escaped him. Maybe that was all he was ever meant to be.

The Shard stirred in his chest, a slow, pulsing warmth. "You understand now."

Cassin didn't respond. He didn't need to. The Shard knew his thoughts as intimately as his own heartbeat.

Strength. That was what he needed. Not just the kind that could break a man's neck—he had that now, thanks to the Shard. But the kind that would ensure no one could ever take from him again. The kind that would let him tear apart the ones responsible for Eira's death, piece by piece.

His fingers curled around the token, the edges biting into his palm.

"You will need more than rage," the Shard murmured. "You will need purpose."

"I have a purpose," Cassin growled.

"Vengeance is a path, not a purpose. What comes after?"

Cassin's jaw tightened. After? There was no after. There was only the next step, the next kill, the next breath taken in a world that had never wanted him in it.

But then, unbidden, Eira's voice flickered in his mind.

"We're getting out of here, Cassin. And then we're going to live."

He exhaled sharply, as if the memory had physically struck him.

She would have hated this. The single-minded obsession with destruction. The surrender to the darkness inside him. She had fought so hard to make him see that there was more to life than survival.

And yet—

She was gone.

The Shard's presence shifted, like a predator circling its prey. "You fear becoming what she despised."

Cassin's grip on the token tightened until his knuckles ached. "I don't care."

"Liar."

He nearly snarled at it. But the Shard was right. He did care. And that was the worst part.

Eira had believed in him. Even when he gave her nothing in return, even when he was nothing but a hollowed-out shell of a person, she had looked at him and seen something worth saving.

If he let himself become nothing more than a weapon, if he drowned in the blood of his enemies until there was nothing left of him but the violence—would that not make her death meaningless?

The thought was unbearable.

Cassin stood abruptly, the cot creaking under his sudden movement. He paced the cramped room, his mind churning. He needed strength. He needed vengeance. But he would not—could not—let himself become a monster she wouldn't recognize.

An oath, then. To himself. To her.

He would walk this path. He would tear apart the ones who had taken her from him. But he would not lose himself in the process.

The Shard pulsed, intrigued. "You bind yourself to a dead girl's ideals?"

"No," Cassin said quietly. "I bind myself to mine."

He would not dishonor her memory by becoming the very thing she had fought against. But he would not let her death go unanswered.

And so, as the first light of dawn crept through the shutters, Cassin made his choice.

He would hunt the ones behind the man in black. He would carve his vengeance into their flesh. But he would not let the darkness consume him.

Not completely.

By midday, Cassin had traded the last of his coins for supplies—a worn but serviceable cloak, a waterskin, a whetstone for his dagger. The token rested against his chest, tucked beneath his shirt, a constant weight against his skin.

The innkeeper had mentioned a caravan heading east at noon, toward the city of Lothern. A place where nobles schemed and mercenaries thrived. A place where a symbol like the one on the token might be recognized.

As Cassin shouldered his pack and stepped into the dusty street, the Shard's voice curled through his mind.

"And if you find the ones you seek? What then?"

Cassin didn't hesitate.

"Then I make them suffer."

But he would not let it be the last thing he did.

For her.

For himself.

And for the oath he had sworn in the dark.