The snow burned where it touched her skin.
She was fourteen. Kneeling. Blood on her lip. Hands raw from hours of combat. The mountains stretched behind her like teeth, jagged and unforgiving. Before her, silence.
And a body.
He was a child, younger, one of the best. She couldn't remember his name. Just the way he'd smiled when he thought he had her. The way he stopped smiling when she crushed his throat, blood dripping from her hands.
A shudder passed through her, but she didn't look away. She didn't blink. She had to stay cold. Stay dead inside.
"Pathetic," someone murmured from behind.
She didn't turn.
The voice belonged to Valen, the man who had trained her since she was five. Or broken her, depending on how one told it. He stepped closer, his boots crunching in the snow as the silence stretched between them like a live wire.
"You hesitated," he said simply.
She didn't reply. She never did. Her heart didn't skip a beat. Her pulse didn't speed up. But inside, somewhere deep, something twisted. Something fragile. Something that wasn't supposed to exist in her.
"Do you know what hesitation gets you?" Valen's voice was low, a threat hidden beneath calm words. He crouched beside her, inspecting the body with the same clinical detachment that had been drilled into her. "Dead. Or worse."
Her eyes stayed fixed on the body, but she wasn't really seeing him anymore.
"He was twelve," she said, her voice barely a whisper.
Valen's response was swift. His hand came down hard, cracking across her face with a force that made her head snap to the side. The pain bloomed, warm and sharp, but she didn't flinch.
The snow beneath her turned red as she fell to the ground, but she caught herself.
"Don't do that again," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "Don't see them. Names. Faces. Ages. It's all noise. And noise is weakness."
She swallowed hard. Blood pooled in her mouth. It didn't matter. It never did. She didn't feel pain the way others did. But something… something had shifted. That moment—when she had hesitated, when the boy had looked at her—it had cracked something open. Something she had buried for years.
Her lip bled fresh, but she said nothing.
"You're not here to feel," Valen whispered, his eyes dark, locking onto hers. "You're here to kill."
She looked up slowly, her gaze piercing through him, and for the first time, Valen saw it—the flicker of something cold and ancient behind her eyes.
It wasn't rage.
It wasn't fear.
It was… awakening.
They dragged her to the Reflection Chamber.
Selene didn't scream. She never screamed. The door slammed shut behind her with a sickening metallic sound. No words. No hope. Just the hollow echo of chains clinking, the cold that wrapped around her like a suffocating hand.
The chamber was black.
Stone walls seeped moisture, the air thick with the scent of death. Cold sweat clung to her skin as she sank to her knees. The pain was a constant companion. Hunger gnawed at her gut, clawing its way through her with each passing hour
Her hands were already raw from endless hours of combat training, now scraped and bloody from the cold stone floor. But she didn't care. She didn't need to care.
She only needed to survive.
Days passed—or maybe weeks. Time meant nothing here. Only the beat of her heart. The rasp of her breath. The ache in her body.
She tried to sleep. But the silence never let her.
Children, like her, huddled in the corners. Some were too weak to move. Others too broken to care. Some whispered in the dark, their voices shaking with fear and despair. A few of them were already dead. The rest will be soon. Why were they being punished, you ask? Because they were simply not talented enough, but sometimes, they were useful. Suicide bombers. That was their only hope of a quick one.
And then she saw her.
The woman was old, yet beautiful. Not in the way that youth sang in sunlight, but in the way age carved strength into the bones. Her silver hair gleamed in the dark, identical to Selene's. Her eyes, though faded with time, still held the fire of someone who had lived a life of rebellion.
At first, Selene stayed away. The woman's chains rattled every time she moved, and her gaze never left Selene. She was studying her, as though seeing something that Selene didn't know she had. She looked like her, she thought. Did my daughter possibly survive? She wondered
And then, the voice came, quiet as the breath of ghosts.
"You have her eyes."
Selene froze. The woman's voice was dry, like the rustle of old paper. "Whose?" Selene asked, her voice barely a whisper.
The woman gave a faint, wry smile." Forget it." She said finally
"Once I tried to run, to get away from this hellhole."
Silence fell. Selene remained still, eyes trained on the floor.
"I can see it in you," the woman continued, her voice distant, as though lost in some other time. "The same look I had. The same hunger. You still want out. But you're trapped now."
Selene didn't reply. She had learned long ago to keep her mouth shut.
"Escape," the woman murmured, her voice low. "It's a dream. But dreams… they die, yet they can also outlive the dreamer."
"Then what's the point?" Selene asked, lifting her head, her voice thick with bitterness. "Why fight? Why survive?"
The woman's eyes darkened. "Because, child, if we stop dreaming, then we're already dead."
A few nights later, there was a scream.
A young girl, slightly older than Selene, but looking already worn out, collapsed to the floor in a pool of blood. A sharp gasp echoed through the room. Labor pains twisted through her body. The other children cowered in fear, but Selene didn't move. She didn't care. Why should she?
Then, in a moment of pure reflex, she moved.
Her hands, skilled in so many ways, acted as though they had a will of their own. She helped. She delivered the twins—two tiny, frail beings that cried as they entered a world of darkness and despair.
The mother smiled at her, faint and weak. Her eyes pleading, pleading for hope. Clearly, not hers.
And then, she collapsed.
"Well she has no use now…"the old woman mattered. Selen`s head snapped to her direction, she wanted to say something to defend her, to protest, just to say something. But slowly she understood what she meant, her head dropped.
Moments later, the door opened, and men in black uniforms entered. They took the babies. One of them turned to the mother's body, and with a cold, detached voice, ordered:
"Dispose of the body."
Selene's blood boiled. Her heart thudded in her chest, a drumbeat of rage.
"She just gave birth," she spat. "You can't just throw her away like—"
The man cut her off with a sneer. "The woman was a failed experiment. Just like the rest lets hope that even one of her twins have some talent."
The old woman's voice broke through the rising fury in Selene's chest.
"They experiment on mothers," she whispered. "Try to improve the children's genes. The twins—if they survive—will have been altered before they were even conceived."
Selene felt her hands tremble. Her vision blurred with rage. She had seen it. Felt it. Her whole existence was just one big experiment.
Some children weren't even conceived naturally, she realized. Some were planted.
And here she was—alive, barely—but alive.
Three nights later….
The old woman touched her arm, the chains rattling as she moved closer.
"it my time now, I don't think once they take me I'll be able to get back." the woman said softly. "But it will be your mission. Free us. Finish what I started."
Selene didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to believe it.
But she couldn't escape the truth. The Reflection Chamber was the end for most. The beginning for some. She had never asked for any of this. But now, it was hers.
She escaped.
Five years later, she returned.
She came back for them.
But the organization knew. They knew she would return. They gathered everyone in one place, they had taken all the clan could provide after all.
Then, boom…
The sky exploded.
Her clan, her dream, burned.
She reached the ruins, coughing against the smoke, her eyes stinging with the bitter scent of charred flesh. The wreckage of her people was all that remained—bodies strewn across the earth, charred and disfigured. The wind carried their cries.
Her knees hit the ground with a sickening thud.
"I failed them," she whispered, tears streaming down her face, though she made no sound.
She couldn't stay. She couldn't live like this.
Her eyes roamed over the wreckage. The ruins. The broken bodies. The children. Her brothers and sisters. Gone.
Gone.
But then, a voice.
"Lilith…?"
A soft whisper
She turned, heart racing.
A boy. Bloodied. Fragile. His voice cracked as he called out for someone who wasn't there.
For a moment, Selene couldn't move.
She wanted to scream. To rage. To demand an answer.
But all she could do was reach for him.
She cradled him in her arms, clutching him tightly, trembling. Her tears fell now, unnoticed by him.
"You're not alone," she whispered, voice breaking. "I'll save you."
And from that moment, she knew she would never stop. Not until the world paid.
She would finish what she had started.
Now she finally had a clue, a way to at least make it up, somehow. To the boy.
She found a lead on Lilith. The deep underworld was acting up. The supposedly extinct monster assassin clan may have had a survivor, under their worst nightmare,Ken Rowland.. Things were about to change. Some were interested in her origins, others were afraid of the potential, and some had secrets that needed to be buried with her. Everyone was after her. And if there was a possibility that she was Lilith, she would move the heavens to keep her safe.
Of course, the girl knew she was stirring a storm, just not how big of a storm—all according to her small will.