Today everything changes forever.
Hagen got up off the reed mat he slept on every night and stepped into his worn sandals, the soles so thin he could count the cobblestones under his feet. The tiny monk’s cell was frigid, and his breath steamed in the air as he pulled on his thin robe and knotted the rope belt around his waist.
And that was it. He was ready for the biggest moment of his life, the moment he had spent four years training—and lying and deceiving—for.
He opened the creaking wooden door and stepped into the stone corridor. Down the corridor, another acolyte stepped out of his cell at the same time. He nodded to Hagen without meeting his eye and turned away without speaking. The Shadow Monks discouraged idle chatter between the acolytes.
But that wasn’t the only reason the other acolyte hurried away. He knew, as every person in the monastery knew, that today Hagen was entering Oblivion. Entering Oblivion was the culmination of every acolyte’s training, the final step before he became a full-fledged Shadow Monk.
It was also extremely dangerous. Many acolytes had died during the ordeal, and even more had been broken, their minds forever scattered by what they had endured there. It was best to avoid those who were about to undergo the ritual, lest some hint of bad luck cling to them.
A cold breeze blew down the corridor, swirling Hagen’s robe. It was always cold in the monastery, which was perched atop one of the highest peaks in the Godfist Mountains. The windows he passed as he walked down the corridor were nothing more than holes in the stone wall, allowing the wind free entry. Nor did the monks spend precious resources heating the sprawling stone and wood structure.
Mastery of the body led to mastery of the cold, and mastery was what the Shadow Monks were all about. The Shadow Monks were legendary, partially for their fighting skills, but mostly for their ability to go anywhere, to enter the most heavily guarded vaults, to circumvent the strongest locks. And all because of their ability to enter Oblivion.
It was because of Oblivion that Hagen had come here four years ago.
Hagen passed through the door at the end of the corridor and stepped outside onto a landing between two buildings. The wind whistled through the gap. Down in the courtyard below, a score of acolytes were lined up, practicing their forms. For four years Hagen had stood amongst them. Not once had he missed training because of injury or ailment. Nor had he ever come close, though he had emerged from numerous training sessions against the elder monks with his body bruised and battered, his eyes swollen shut. His will was iron. He simply would not allow such things to interfere with his purpose.
Stone steps led upwards. The steps were worn hollow in the center from centuries of sandaled feet. There was no railing, though a slip would lead to a long fall to the flagstone courtyard and ice was common for most of the year. Constant vigilance was a vital trait for a Shadow Monk acolyte. If they wished to continue breathing, that is.
The steps wound upward, wrapping around the building to the back where they ended at the mountainside. From there, shallow niches cut into the raw stone led upwards toward the twin, rocky peaks of the mountain.
Hagen climbed easily, unshaken by the sheer drops that awaited the first mistake. He was focused, intent. Mere physical objects could not stop him on this day.
He reached the top and paused to look around. Snow-capped peaks surrounded the monastery, remote and untouchable. Far below, a river wound through a narrow valley, the roofs of a village visible on its banks. The wind was stronger now, grabbing at him as if eager to toss him over the edge and onto the sharp rocks a thousand paces below.
A wooden footbridge led across a chasm to a small temple built atop a lonely pinnacle of rock. The abbot would be waiting there for him.
Oblivion waited.
The footbridge seemed wholly inadequate, a frail thing destined to blow away in the next gust of wind. It swayed alarmingly when he set foot on it, and some of the boards were rotted nearly through, but Hagen did not take hold of the support chains. He never did. Nothing cleared the mind like the threat of imminent death.
The temple was a tiny thing, built of stone so weathered by the centuries that it seemed part of the pinnacle it stood atop. The slate roof tiles were stained orange by lichen. Doorless archways opened to the four cardinal directions, holy symbols inscribed on the stone above each one.
A ragged prayer flag fluttered from the top. Climbing up to replace the flag was a task given to new acolytes early on. Many quit rather than attempt it. Some tried and fell to their deaths. Their skeletons were lost forever in the icy crevices of the mountains.
The abbot was sitting cross-legged, his long, white beard nearly touching the floor. He was ancient, as withered as an apple stored through a long winter, but his eyes were sharp and piercing.
“Welcome, Janus,” he said, indicating the floor in front of him.
Hagen bowed, sat and adopted the same posture as the abbot. Four years he had been here and not once had his real name been uttered. Janus was what the monks knew him as, and it was all they would ever know him as, since he planned on fleeing this place as soon as he had mastered Oblivion.
“Four years you have been here, Janus,” the abbot said. “During that time your effort and dedication have been nothing but exemplary. Rarely have I seen an acolyte progress as rapidly as you have. Few have been ready for the final test so quickly.”
Hagen lowered his face to the floor for a long moment, then sat up. “Your words do me great honor, Exalted One. I seek only to humbly fulfill my duties as best as I can.”
The abbot smiled, the creases in his face deepening, lips pulling back to reveal toothless gums. “I am certain that you will bring great honor to the monastery. You will be a light for future generations.”
Hagen bowed again. Nothing showed on his face. There was no sign of the true man who lurked beneath the calm exterior he showed the world. Hagen never showed anything he didn’t mean to show.
But then, Hagen had a great deal of experience in subterfuge. After all, deception is one of the assassin’s greatest skills and one he had mastered long ago.
Hagen had been an assassin since he was thirteen and took fifteen silver pieces from the owner of an inn to kill the man who had bedded his wife. There were many assassins in the Fifteen Lands, but none could match Hagen.
He was a master of disguise, a natural chameleon who changed identities more easily than most people changed clothes. Hagen wasn’t his real name. His real name was buried so deeply that even he had trouble remembering it sometimes.
Hagen could work his way into anyone’s confidence, talk his way past any guard. He was a master of stealth, able to sneak past any sentry.
He was ruthless and deadly as well. Conscience did not bother him. He took his pay and did the job. Never did his knife falter from its task.
He had killed scores of people for money. Young, old, women, men. He’d slaughtered entire families, wiped family lines from the earth.
Once he mastered Oblivion, he would be the greatest assassin the world had ever known. With it, he would be able to penetrate the most secure fortress, enter the most heavily guarded vault. There would be nowhere he could not go, no one he could not kill. His infamy would be unmatched.
“I will do everything in my power to uphold the name of the Shadow Monks, Exalted One,” he said.
“Of that I have no doubt,” the old man said. “You are ready then? No second thoughts? You could step back, complete this later, and none would speak ill of you.”
“I am ready. I am meant to do this.”
Another smile. “Yes, you are. I know this with perfect certainty. No man was ever more ready to face the trials of Oblivion.”
Hagen regarded him calmly, not allowing his irritation to show. He wanted to be done with this. He was eager to put this place with all its endless chants and prayers and babbling fools behind him forever and claim his rightful place in the world, and the sooner this senile old man quit talking, the sooner he could.
But Hagen understood the importance of patience. Patience was a vital skill for an assassin, who must be prepared to wait days or even months to finish a job. Once he had lain motionless in a thicket of nettles for three days, ants and midges feasting on him the whole time, for the archduke of Karjaana to pass by so he could kill him. He could certainly wait a short while longer and allow this fool to carry out his part in this charade.
Perhaps he would kill the abbot before he left. The thought threatened to elicit a smile which had to be suppressed.
“In Oblivion, there is no deception. All is laid bare,” the abbot continued. “All is revealed. You will learn truths about yourself that you have hidden.”
Yeah, yeah, hidden truths. Get on with it already, Hagen wanted to say. He had no self-deception. He had stared into his own depths and seen what he was. He had no illusions.
“Once you enter Oblivion, you will never be the same.”
Hagen regarded him steadily. “I welcome the chance to further my own learning, no matter the price.”
An enigmatic smile crossed the old man’s face. “It is time.”
Without warning, he moved, far faster than Hagen would have thought possible, too fast for him to react.
One moment the abbot was sitting cross-legged. Then he was leaning to the side, his weight on one arm.
A sandaled foot shot out and struck Hagen in the chest. Hagen toppled over backward and fell into darkness.
╬ ╬ ╬
Hagen opened his eyes. He was in an opulent room, expensive blackwood furniture, a four-poster bed inlaid with mother-of-pearl, silk curtains, thick rugs on the polished wooden floor. It was nighttime, the room dimly lit by a single lantern on the table.
Hagen jumped to his feet, a barely-suppressed scream on his lips. His heart was pounding madly. He spun, eyes darting around the room, a rabbit seeking its burrow before the wolf arrives.
A woman’s blood-curdling screams in the distance.
“M-mother?” he whimpered in a high child’s voice.
The screams tapered off into animal begging. “No, please! Spare me!”
A sickening crunch and the begging stopped suddenly.
He ran to the wardrobe, opened the door and crawled inside. He pulled the door shut as best he could and pushed through heavy coats, trousers, and long dresses to the back, where he huddled shivering. The coats smelled of his father, the dresses of his mother.
He would never see them again.
The awful knowledge of it threatened to bring forth a scream and he had to shove his fist in his mouth to throttle it down to a single moan.
More screams, these from the room next door. They stopped, and he knew his sister was dead.
A man yelling as he ran down the hallway toward the killing. That would be loyal Jervis, the butler. His voice cut off as abruptly as the rest.
An awful silence descended. He huddled there, straining to hear over his heartbeat. Was it over? Had the killer gone?
Then, a sound worse than all the rest.
Footsteps. Drawing steadily closer.
He curled tighter in on himself, as if he could crawl into his own skin and disappear.
The door to the room opened. The footsteps moved around the room, stopped.
Long moments that felt like an eternity passed. Utter silence.
Finally, unable to take it any longer, he leaned forward and reached out with one small hand to push the wardrobe door open. He saw no one. On his knees, he crawled forward, pushed the door open further.
“There you are. I knew there was one more whelp hiding somewhere. Good of you to save me the trouble of searching.”
The killer was dressed all in black, a long knife dripping gore held by his side.
Hagen looked up into the killer’s face and screamed at what he saw.
The killer was him.
But it was not the face he saw when he looked in the mirror. It was monstrous, bestial, with curving fangs, malevolent yellow eyes, horns protruding from his forehead.
“Noooo!” he wailed as the killer reached for him.
“Hold still,” the killer rasped.
Hagen tried to crawl back into the depths of the wardrobe, but the killer caught him easily and dragged him out into the light.
A hand grasped his hair, yanked his head back.
The last thing he saw was the knife slashing downward and all went dark again.
╬ ╬ ╬
Gasping, retching in fear and horror, Hagen rolled on the floor. It took him a few moments to realize that he wasn’t dead, that he was back in the temple. He rolled onto his back, trying desperately to slow his breathing, to control his terror.
The abbot looked down on him, the same enigmatic smile on his lips, though now Hagen knew its meaning.
“Not quite what you expected, was it?”
Hagen forced himself to sit up. The abbot crouched beside him and pulled his head back—another flash of the killer’s face, his face—and raised one eyebrow.
“It is possible that I am not as senile as you think, Janus. Or should I call you Hagen the Assassin?”
“You…knew?” Hagen gasped.
“From the first.”
“Why?”
“Why didn’t I say anything? I don’t know for sure. I thought often of killing you, but some voice inside said I should stay my hand.”
“You’re going to let me go?”
The abbot stood and gestured to the door. “Go.”
Hagen made it to his feet and staggered to the door, turned back when the abbot spoke again.
“Know this: whenever you enter Oblivion it will be the same. Before you can use the place, you will have to face the truth of who you are. Every time you will live as one of your victims in the moments before he died. It is the price.”
The abbot smiled and shook a finger at him. “Remember? I told you no man was ever more ready to face the trials of Oblivion.”
Hagen made his way unseeing across the footbridge, clinging like a drowning man to the support chains.
Everything had changed forever.