For someone with the skills that Soki possessed, scaling the wall had been refreshingly easy, if tedious. She was trained by the best assassins in the world since she could walk to use tricks most ordinary humans had no clue existed. These secrets were passed down through the generations since the founding of the Circle by Emperor Qinsuto almost a thousand years ago. Unfortunately, she couldn’t use such skills to get Wujun inside, especially since he insisted Kentai remain with them.


    The thought of the Zosara made her blood boil and her jaw clench. This anger was a distraction she couldn’t afford, but the fact that Wujun had been so mixed up with Kentai was a huge failure on her part. She couldn’t deny it, but neither would she admit to it aloud. At least not to her traveling companions.


    Soki’s hands tightened into fists at her side as she slipped through the crowded streets of Kurokume, pushing her way past the citizens that to her eyes looked no different from the refugees. She wrinkled her nose at the pungent smell of fear and unwashed bodies, disgusted by the mass of weak, useless people who blocked her path. She had no patience for ordinary folk and couldn’t imagine why Wujun worried about people he didn’t know.


    I suppose, given his destiny, he should have some concern for the peasants serving him. But he cares too much. He’s soft and impressionable. Goratsu, the old fool, he was supposed to train that out of him…


    She scowled, her jaw aching from how hard she was grinding her teeth. The whole affair in Tiguri had gone completely sideways and now, here she was, stuck in a foreign city, forced to work with her greatest enemy, a Zosara. The whole thing made her sick and yet she had to keep up the appearance of cooperation. She couldn’t afford to be dismissed from Wujun’s side. The Inner Circle did not tolerate failure, even from their leader’s own daughter. She could afford no further shame.


    Abruptly, someone shoved into her, pushing her off balance and causing her to stagger into a dimly lit alleyway. She had been so focused on her ruminations that she didn’t see the attack coming, but she was ready for the next blow and dodged out of the way before the hilt could connect with her head.


    For a brief moment she thought her assailant was Kentai, but then she whirled around to face him and saw right away that this was no Zosara. The man was disheveled, his clothes tattered and worn. His hair hung in greasy mats around his face, which was covered by a scraggly, graying beard. What she mistook for a sword was just a hilt attached to a rusted, broken stub of a blade.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Soki let out a derisive laugh and lowered her hands. “Be gone beggar and I’ll forget I ever saw you.” It was the only warning he would receive.


    He matched her scowl with one of his own and brandished the pathetic weapon. “Hand over your valuables or else!”


    She let her expression melt away, revealing the emptiness in her eyes. There was no emotion in her as she drew a dagger slowly from its hidden sheath. Before the man could realize the severity of his mistake, Soki had dashed forward, her arm a blur as she slashed the blade across his throat. Blood sprayed out of the wound and he fell backward, clutching wildly at his neck.


    Without a shred of remorse, fear, or even anger, Soki stood over him until he choked to death on his own blood. Then, she smiled coldly and stepped over him on her her way out of the alley. Just as she’d promised, as she returned to the street, she swept the encounter from her mind. He was nothing to her. She felt nothing. It was an obstacle that had been overcome and then forgotten.


    Emotions had been beaten down in her as a child. She had been shaped into a tool meant for one thing alone; killing in service of the Circle. It was why she had been born, her sole reason for living, and that was a fact she’d come to terms with during her early years of training. It had been brutal, painful, but necessary.


    Wujun had yet to learn this lesson or else he wouldn’t be swooning over the lowest form of life in Ryuutachi. Perhaps the Circle had been wrong not to initiate him into their ranks, to put him through the rigorous trials that would mold him as it had her? No sooner had the thought entered her mind that she swatted it away. It wasn’t her place to judge. A decision had been made and there was no going back. She just had to trust that her superiors would be able to bring him back into the fold.


    Finally, Soki reached her destination and stopped in front of the vendor. “What stalks the shadows?” she asked, her tone as casual as someone discussing the weather.


    The old man sitting beside the nearly barren vegetable stand scratched lazily at the side of his neck and held out his hand. “Only the dead know,” he replied, not bothering to look at her.


    Satisfied, she placed a plain white scroll in his waiting palm. It was sealed with a distinctive crest, the one matching the signet ring she wore hidden beneath her clothes on a leather cord.


    Upon seeing it, the old man’s eyes widened and he sat up a little straighter. He didn’t speak again, but he nodded and she could tell by the set of his jaw he would deliver her message with haste.


    The Inner Circle has to know what I saw. I wouldn’t have thought such a thing possible had I not seen it with my own eyes.


    Soki pivoted and slinked away from the merchant, her scowl deepening. She longed for the days when her duty was plain; protect Wujun. In the last few months, what was once so clear was now little more than a murky pond.


    Torn between loyalty and duty she had written only two sentences on the parchment: ‘Qinsuto’s heir has reached Kurokume. He is the void Zosara.’