"The sharpest blade speaks in silence. And tonight, it speaks to blood."
---
Jayden stood before the cracked mirror in his study, staring at the reflection that wasn't his own.
Behind him, nothing.
In the mirror, a boy with coal-dark eyes, identical to Jayden's, stood smirking.
"You're late, Ochieng," the phantom said.
Jayden didn't move. "Who are you?"
The boy's smirk deepened. "I'm the mistake your father tried to erase."
The mirror shattered.
But the laughter lingered.
---
That same night, the inner circle gathered: Tielen, Jeff, Wendy, Linet, Naela, and Caroline.
Jayden threw the dagger Gloria had tried to kill him with onto the map of the Seven Cities.
It stabbed into a single point: Mavoko's Edge.
"She knew about the vault. She knew about my name," Jayden said. "And she called me Ochieng."
Tielen raised an eyebrow. "That's your real name, isn't it?"
Jayden nodded. "But not the whole of it."
He walked to the wall, pressing his palm against an old seal. It opened—revealing a scroll burned at the edges.
He read it aloud.
"Jayden... Ochieng. The name forged in fire. The heir in shadow. And the knife the world must never find."
---
Meanwhile, Matilda knelt in the abandoned ruins of the Church of Echoes, tracing a name on a tombstone lost to time:
"Akinyi Ochieng – Mother of Shadows."
Beside her, the ground trembled.
The seal cracked.
A hand shot up—skeletal, trembling, clutching something.
A dagger.
With Jayden's birthmark etched into its hilt.
Matilda's voice shook. "The Knife That Whispers… it's real."
And it had chosen its wielder.
---
Back at the estate, Gloria lay in a velvet-draped room under surveillance, her wounds slowly healing.
But Naela wasn't convinced.
"I've seen betrayal wear prettier dresses than yours," she told her, gripping the hilt at her side.
Gloria turned, eyes wet with something more dangerous than sorrow.
"Then you've never seen a woman lose everything and decide to burn the world for it."
She pressed something into Naela's hand—a bloodstained photo.
It showed two babies in a cradle.
Twins.
And on the back, scribbled in frantic ink: "Only one was meant to survive."
---
In a quiet chamber, alone with the ancient dagger from the vault, Jayden stared into its glinting blade.
Then... a whisper.
Not imagined.
Real.
"Jayden Ochieng... your brother lives."
He turned.
No one.
But the dagger pulsed in his hand.
As if alive.
As if leading him.
To the true heir...
Or the one who would kill him for the title.
---