The Last Knight of a Dead Bloodline

Rowan opened his eyes to silence. That was strange. The training hall was never silent. He pushed himself up from the floor and his hand landed in something warm and wet. He looked down. Blood covered the stone floor, and it wasn't his. Bodies lay everywhere. Knights he had trained with for six years. Garrick, who always cheated at cards and laughed about it. Old Master Bren, who taught him how to hold a sword the right way. Fenn, who was only fifteen and had joined the Order three months ago. All dead. Rowan's chest tightened. He crawled toward Garrick and shook his shoulder. Nothing. He pressed two fingers to his neck, the way Master Bren had taught him to check for a pulse on the training dummies. Nothing. "No," Rowan said. His voice cracked. "No, no, no." He stood up too fast and his head spun. The hall stretched out in front of him, forty knights sleeping in this room last night, and now forty knights dead on the floor. He counted the doors. Both were still shut. Nobody had broken in from outside. Someone had done this from within the walls. Footsteps echoed from the hallway. Slow. Unhurried. Rowan grabbed the nearest sword from a dead man's hand and backed against the wall. His breathing was too loud. He tried to slow it down and failed. The door opened. Commander Aldric Thorne stepped into the hall. His silver armor, the same armor every knight in the Order respected, was soaked in blood from collar to boot. He looked at Rowan the way a man looks at a mess he forgot to clean up. "You're supposed to be dead," Thorne said. Rowan's hands shook around the sword grip. "Commander. What happened here? Who did this?" "I did this." Thorne said it plainly, like he was reporting the weather. "All of it. Every one of them." The words didn't make sense. Rowan had known this man for six years. Thorne had pulled him out of the recruit line himself, telling him he had potential nobody else saw. Thorne had sat with him after his worst training days and told him to keep going. "You're lying," Rowan said, even though he knew it was true. The blood on Thorne's armor didn't lie. "I'm not going to explain myself to a boy who wasn't even supposed to survive the night." Thorne drew his sword. The blade caught the torchlight. "This will be quick, Rowan. I promise you that much." Thorne moved fast. Faster than Rowan remembered him moving in training. The first strike came from the left, and Rowan barely got his sword up in time. The impact rattled through his arms and knocked him sideways into a support beam. "Wait," Rowan said. "Just tell me why—" Thorne didn't wait. The second strike caught Rowan across the ribs, not deep, but enough to knock the air out of him. He hit the ground hard. "Get up," Thorne said. "I want you to at least try." Rowan's mind raced. He had trained for six years, but training against practice blades wasn't the same as this. Thorne wasn't holding back the way an instructor holds back on a student. He was fighting to kill. Rowan rolled away from the next strike and scrambled to his feet. He put the length of the hall between them, buying himself three seconds to think. The window behind him was shuttered but not locked. It was a two-story drop to the courtyard below. "There's nowhere to run," Thorne said. "I checked every exit before I started. You picked a bad night to sleep in the west wing." "Why?" Rowan shouted. "Why any of this?" Something flickered across Thorne's face. Not guilt. Rowan didn't think Thorne felt guilt anymore. It looked more like impatience. "Because of what's in your blood," Thorne said. "Something none of us were supposed to find still walking around. I was told to be thorough. I intend to be." Rowan didn't understand any of it, and there wasn't time to ask again. Thorne lunged, and this time Rowan didn't try to block it. He threw himself sideways through the shutters. Wood splintered around him. Cold night air hit his face. The ground came up fast, and Rowan twisted mid-fall to avoid landing on his head. He hit the courtyard stones on his shoulder and heard something c***k in his forearm. Pain shot up to his elbow, sharp and immediate. He didn't have time to check how bad it was. Above him, Thorne's silhouette appeared in the broken window. "Running won't help you," Thorne called down. "But run if it makes you feel better." Rowan ran. His arm screamed with every stride, but he didn't slow down. He crossed the courtyard, past the well, past the stables where the horses were kicking at their stalls, spooked by something they could smell that Rowan couldn't. He didn't stop to free them. He didn't have time. The fortress gate stood open. That should have been impossible. The Order kept the gate locked and guarded every night without fail. Rowan understood then that the guards were probably dead too, killed before Thorne ever reached the training hall. He ran through the gate and into the tree line beyond, the mountain forest swallowing him in darkness. Branches tore at his face. His boots slid on wet leaves. Somewhere behind him, he heard Thorne's voice again, not shouting, just carrying easily through the night air like he had all the time in the world. "You can't outrun what's in your own blood, Rowan." Rowan kept moving. He didn't know where the forest paths led at night, not really, he'd only walked them during daylight drills. He just knew he needed distance. He needed time to think, time to breathe, time to figure out how one night could take everyone he had. He ran until his legs burned and his lungs felt scraped raw. When he finally stopped, hidden behind a fallen tree trunk, he pressed his good hand against his mouth to keep his breathing quiet. The forest around him was still. No footsteps. No voice. Rowan looked down at his broken arm, swollen already, and then at his other hand, still shaking. He thought about Garrick's face. About Fenn, only fifteen, dead on the floor of a hall that was supposed to be the safest place in the mountains. He thought about Thorne's words. *Something in your blood.* None of it made sense. His parents had died when he was a baby, some accident nobody ever explained in detail. He had no family, no name that mattered outside the Order, nothing that should make him worth hunting. And yet forty knights were dead, and Rowan was the only one Thorne had bothered to chase into the forest. A twig snapped somewhere to his left. Rowan froze, sword still gripped in his good hand, and turned toward the sound. A shape moved between the trees, low and careful, closing the distance fast. Whoever it was, they weren't stopping to ask questions first.