The world had never been kind to Silas Veyne. Born in the slums of Kordessa, a city where gold ruled and the poor were trampled beneath the boots of the powerful, he learned early that survival was not a right but a privilege. His mother died when he was six, her body found cold in an alleyway, discarded like trash. His father—a drunk and a gambler—vanished soon after, swallowed by debt or the river, Silas never knew which.
Alone, he survived on scraps, stealing from merchants who barely noticed his hands brushing against their coin purses. But in a city like Kordessa, even street rats had their predators. The Black Sun, a ruthless criminal syndicate, ran the underworld, and when their enforcers caught Silas with stolen bread, they made an example of him. They shattered his fingers, leaving him to starve in the gutter.
That should have been the end of him.
But fate had other plans.
A man named Adrien Falk, known as the Raven, found him. Falk was no ordinary criminal—he was an assassin, a blade in the dark, and he saw something in Silas that others did not. Perhaps it was the boy's defiance, the fire in his eyes even as he bled. Falk took him in, not out of kindness but necessity. He needed an apprentice, someone who could move unseen, someone with nothing to lose.
For years, Silas trained under Falk's brutal tutelage. He learned the art of the silent kill, the precision of a dagger strike, the patience of the hunt. He studied poisons, disguises, the delicate balance of power in Kordessa's ruling elite. The weak died, the strong survived, and the smartest thrived.
By the time he turned twenty, Silas had earned his first contract. A corrupt noble who had betrayed the Black Sun. They called it a test. He called it a beginning.
Slipping into the noble's chamber under the cover of night, Silas did not hesitate. He had spent a decade preparing for this moment. With a single stroke of his blade, he severed the man's life. No rage, no hesitation—only cold precision. When the noble's blood stained his hands, he felt nothing. No regret. No sorrow.
Only purpose.
The Black Sun never saw it coming. They had left him to die, but he had become something else—a shadow in the dark, a whisper of death. They called him Black Jack, a name whispered in fear, a symbol of inevitable demise.
And Kordessa was only the beginning.