(Blaze's Perspective)
Silence. To most, it was peace. A moment of calm. A retreat from chaos.
But not for me.
Not here. Not in the Silent Veil.
Here, silence was something else entirely—it was control. A language of shadows. A noose of obedience. The kind of silence that watched you when you thought you were alone, that listened when you whispered to yourself. That punished you when you dared to break it.
I learned that truth too early.
At ten, I stopped asking questions—not because I grew wise, but because I realized no one would answer me. They never did. Not even my parents. Especially not them. It didn't matter that I was born from Mira and Kael—two of the clan's most respected warriors. Bloodline meant nothing if the blood itself was feared.
They said I was the heir.
Heir to what, though?
Something old. Something cursed. Something they would never name aloud.
I remember the first time I noticed the difference in the way they looked at me. Like I was something breakable—and dangerous if I broke wrong. I wasn't just a child anymore. I was a symbol. A vessel. A possible future they weren't sure they wanted to exist.
So I watched. Listened. Learned.
And I stopped speaking unless I had to.
Silence became my weapon.
Observation became my shield.
Other children trained with wooden blades and practiced breath meditations. I studied how the elders shifted when they lied. How the air in a corridor changed after someone vanished. How the murals on the stone walls seemed to tell a story no one dared speak aloud.
The compound was enormous—maze-like. But it felt like a cage.
A quiet, gilded cage built from secrets.
The murals bothered me most. Twisting scenes of betrayal, revenge, glory painted in aged crimson and ash. Some names had been scratched off. Others preserved in gold. The eyes in the portraits—those were the worst. Empty. As if the souls had been swallowed by the Veil itself.
I used to wonder: Were they heroes? Or monsters?
Now I think… maybe both.
Even the way the clan treated one another told me more than any lesson. Respect here wasn't shown in kindness. It was distance. Fear. Calculation. Words were weapons—only used when necessary, and always precise. Bowing was mandatory. Eye contact with the Shadow Demon, forbidden.
Even my parents avoided his gaze.
My mother—once warm, once soft—had grown colder than steel.
My father used to laugh. Now he looked like a man who feared his own voice.
I remember that night, sitting between them, the brazier flickering as though afraid of the silence around it.
"You don't talk to me anymore," I said.
The words came out steady. Not angry. Not pleading. Just… true.
Mira flinched. That alone told me more than anything else.
"We are always here for you, Blaze. Even if we don't say it."
I stared at her. "That's not the same."
Kael's jaw tightened. "The Veil listens. Every word, every whisper. You'll understand when you're older."
I did understand. More than they thought.
"No," I told them. "You're not scared of them. You're scared of me."
That hit harder than any training blow I'd ever taken.
Mira reached out then, hesitantly. Her hand on my cheek was gentle.
Soft. A memory of who she used to be.
"No. Never of you," she whispered. "Only of what they might make you."
That was worse. Because it meant they saw what I saw. The path I was being pushed toward.
"Then help me fight it."
They didn't answer.
But something changed that night.
Master Riven, my main trainer, was different from the others. He didn't speak much, but when he did, his words mattered. He didn't belittle. He didn't threaten. He simply taught. Like a man who knew how dangerous knowledge could be, and chose to pass it anyway.
One day, after I'd been knocked to the mat for the fourth time, he knelt beside me. The pain burned through my ribs, but I stayed still, watching the ceiling breathe above me.
"Pain is only useful if you learn from it. Otherwise, it's just noise," he said.
I nodded. "I learned. You pivot before you sweep. It's subtle. But I saw it."
He blinked once, then smiled. "Good. So next time, stop me."
He didn't treat me like a tool. Or a weapon.
He treated me like someone who might become more.
"I don't want to be like the others," I told him.
He raised an eyebrow. "Then what do you want?"
"To understand. Everything."
He studied me carefully. "Understanding comes with a price."
I didn't flinch. "I'm ready."
That was when everything changed.
The training got harder. Longer. But I didn't care. Because something else had started—something deeper.
The dreams.
Visions, maybe. Memories that weren't mine.
I began waking at night, my sheets soaked, breath fast. But it wasn't fear. Not really. It was something else.
I saw fire. A black mask, shattered. Walls crumbling. The compound in ruin.
A voice whispering in a language I couldn't name but somehow… I understood.
I never told anyone. Not even Riven.
Not even my mother.
Instead, I kept a journal. Hidden under my mat. In it, I sketched everything I saw. Symbols. Patterns. Phrases I didn't understand until later. Prophecies, maybe. Or warnings.
One morning, Mira caught me writing.
"You dream again?" she asked, voice quieter than usual.
"Yes," I said, not looking up.
"You should tell the elders."
I paused, then stared at her. "Would you have told them? If it were you?"
She hesitated. Then said the one thing I needed to hear.
"No."
For the first time in years, I reached for her hand.
"Then teach me what they won't. Please. Before it's too late."
She looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time—not as her son, but as something else. A question with no easy answer.
She nodded. "Tomorrow. Before first light."
The next year was unlike any before.
Mira taught me rites she once swore never to speak.
Kael led me through hidden tunnels carved before I was born. Escape routes. Dead ends. Secret places no one mentioned.
Riven gave me scrolls meant for high initiates—texts wrapped in red silk, warnings scrawled across their edges.
And I read.
And I remembered.
Every lesson, every scar, every whispered threat—I absorbed them.
Because the more I learned, the more I saw the truth:
The Silent Veil didn't want to teach me.
It wanted to chain me.
But knowledge? Knowledge can't be chained. It's not a sword. It's not a law.
It's a fire.
And I'd been feeding mine in secret for years.
They thought I was theirs.
They were wrong.
I still keep my journal. It's filled now—page after page of things I shouldn't know.
Of what's coming.
The mask I saw in my dreams… it wasn't just a vision. It was a symbol. A warning. And a promise.
Something is going to break.
And when it does, I'll be ready.
Because I'm not just Blaze, son of Mira and Kael.
I'm not just a weapon they forged.
I am their mistake.
And I will burn the silence they worship.
I will come back to you....