The monastery clung to the Carpathian mountainside like a stone prayer, its ancient walls weathered by centuries of wind and secrets. Snow fell in lazy spirals through the pre-dawn darkness, each flake catching the amber light spilling from the training hall's Gothic windows.
Inside, violence moved like poetry.
Arendel Kozlov danced between seven attackers, his silver hair catching candlelight as he flowed from strike to counter-strike with supernatural grace. His ice-blue eyes—his father's eyes—tracked every movement with predatory precision. At twenty, he possessed the lean, dangerous beauty of a blade wrapped in silk.
The first monk came high with a bo staff. Arendel ducked, swept the man's legs, and drove his elbow into the falling body's solar plexus. The monk hit the stone floor with a wet thud, gasping for breath that wouldn't come.
The second and third attacked simultaneously—one with twin sai, the other with a chain whip that sang through the air like death's own whistle. Arendel caught the chain bare-handed, ignoring the metal links that bit into his palm, and yanked hard. The monk stumbled forward into Arendel's rising knee, which caved in his ribs with the sound of breaking kindling.
Blood sprayed across ancient stones.
The sai-wielder thrust for Arendel's heart, but the young assassin twisted like smoke, letting the triple-pronged weapon pass within a whisper of his chest. His hand clamped down on the monk's wrist, twisted until bones popped like firecrackers, then drove the man's own sai through his thigh. The monk's scream echoed off vaulted ceilings as he collapsed, clutching his punctured leg.
Four left.
They came together now, a coordinated assault of steel and fury. Nunchucks blurred through the air toward Arendel's skull while a katana sought his heart and twin escrima sticks aimed to shatter his ribs. The fourth monk hung back, throwing stars glinting between his fingers like deadly promises.
Arendel smiled.
He dropped into a crouch as the nunchucks whistled overhead, swept his leg in a perfect arc that took down two attackers, then sprang up with his hands already moving. He caught the katana blade between his palms—an impossible technique that should have cost him his fingers. Instead, he snapped the ancient steel like a dry twig.
The broken blade's tip punched through the swordsman's shoulder, pinning him to a wooden pillar. His screams joined the monastery's eternal song of suffering.
The escrima fighter pressed his attack, sticks blurring in a deadly pattern that would have overwhelmed a lesser opponent. But Arendel wasn't lesser—he was evolution, perfection wrapped in human form. He deflected seventeen strikes in three seconds, then grabbed both sticks and headbutted their wielder so hard the man's nose exploded in a fountain of crimson.
The last monk threw his stars in desperation. Arendel plucked them from the air like falling leaves, spun once, and sent them back with interest. They found their homes in the monk's shoulders and thighs, dropping him writhing to the stone floor.
Silence fell like a shroud.
Seven bodies lay scattered around the training hall, groaning and bleeding but alive. Barely. Arendel stood in the center of the carnage, not even breathing hard, his pale skin unmarked except for the thin line of blood across his palm where the chain had bitten.
"Disappointing." His voice carried the faint trace of a Russian accent, cultured and cold as Siberian wind. "Father Matthias, your monks grow soft."
The old priest emerged from the shadows between Gothic arches, his weathered face impassive. "They are not meant to defeat you, Arendel. Only to test your readiness."
"Then they have failed at both tasks."
Father Matthias approached, his robes whispering against stone. In his gnarled hands, he carried an ornate wooden box inlaid with silver Orthodox crosses. "Perhaps. But your training here is complete."
Arendel's ice-blue eyes fixed on the box. After twenty years, after a lifetime of preparation, the moment had finally arrived. "Is that...?"
"Your inheritance. Your father's final gift." The priest's voice was heavy with old sorrows. "Viktor Kozlov was many things—assassin, killer, monster. But he was also a father who loved his son enough to ensure he would survive in a world that devours the weak."
The box opened with a whisper of hinges. Inside, nestled in black velvet, lay three items that would change everything:
A photograph of a raven-haired woman with ice-blue eyes, her beauty terrible and perfect. Written on the back in Viktor's precise handwriting: *"Natasha Volkov - The Viper. She killed me. She killed your mother. Find her."*
A black titanium credit card with no name, only numbers that promised unlimited resources.
And a letter sealed with red wax, bearing the mark of the Shadow Consortium—the organization that controlled the underworld's deadliest players.
Arendel's fingers trembled as he lifted the photograph. The woman's eyes seemed to bore into his soul, and for a moment he saw his father's face in the museum, blood pooling beneath his broken body while this beautiful monster stood over him like an avenging angel.
"She's beautiful," he whispered.
"Beauty is the devil's greatest deception," Father Matthias said. "Viper is the most dangerous assassin alive. She has killed kings and presidents, brought down governments, ended bloodlines. Your father was the only one who ever came close to matching her, and she put him in the ground."
Arendel's grip tightened on the photograph until his knuckles went white. "Where is she?"
"That is what you must discover. The Shadow Consortium's letter will provide resources, contacts, a way into the underworld your father once ruled. But beware, boy—revenge is a double-edged sword that cuts both ways."
"Let it cut." Arendel slipped the photograph into his coat pocket, close to his heart. "I've been preparing for this my entire life."
"You've been preparing to fight. There's a difference."
Arendel looked around the training hall one last time—at the broken monks, the bloodstained stones, the candles that had witnessed twenty years of his evolution from boy to weapon. "Then it's time I learned."
He walked toward the monastery's ancient doors, his footsteps echoing like gunshots in the vaulted space. Behind him, Father Matthias called out one final warning:
"Remember, Arendel—when you set out for revenge, dig two graves."
The young assassin paused at the threshold, snowflakes swirling around his silver hair like fallen stars. "I'll need more than two."
The doors slammed shut behind him with the finality of a coffin lid.