Lonik

Lonik was left at the gates of the Karnak orphanage before he was old enough to cry. He doesn't remember his parents. He doesn't even know if they're still alive.

Imelda raised him, among hunger, cold and beatings. There he learned early that compassion is a luxury. And that in Karnak, nobody could afford it.

The city had an owner: King Arkeops. You could smell his cruelty in every alley, and his guard was far too big to attack head on.

So Lonik looked for another door. The back one.

He joined the assassins' guild. Not for gold, not for pleasure. For answers.

Imelda disowned him the day she found out. He never stopped loving her like a mother. With the first gold he earned, he started sending money to the orphanage, so no child would end up like him.

He became the best assassin in the kingdom. He arrived. He killed. He vanished. His victims rarely saw him coming. The ones who did already had a dagger at their throat or a half-finished cup in their hand.

He learned poison in Memphis, the city of serpents. Its governor, EkBor, was always very kind to him. Too kind. Lonik never turned his back on him.

Everything went fine until he crossed paths with Thaimor. A bald noble with a blond beard, a scar splitting one eye and the face of a man who has never had a thought in his life. He looked stupid. He wasn't.

He gave Lonik the beating of his life. Lonik fled with bruised ribs and his pride in the dirt. Since that night he carries two daggers. In case one isn't enough.

He is no hero and no villain. He kills for hire, and his gold lasts as long as it takes him to spend it: a few nights best left untold, and the rest in the poor quarters. He has never forgotten where he comes from.

Years later he returned to Karnak, while Arkeops was crushing yet another revolt. This time he walked in through the front gate. Arkeops never walked out of any.

The next morning they wanted to crown him. Lonik refused the crown, abolished the monarchy and spent the treasury on the orphanage. Ever since, they call him the thief who became king. And didn't want to be.

But the throne bored him. He left Garbando, his butler, in charge and went back to his trade. A man called Rafael offered him a simple job: steal a medallion from a tomb in an ancient pantheon. No traps. No guards. Too easy.

When he touched the gravestone, something came out. It wasn't flesh, and it wasn't shadow. It spoke without moving its lips and told him he would pay for everything he had done.

When he got back to the guild tavern, nobody recognised him. They laughed at him. They called him a fraud.

Then he saw his reflection. He had someone else's face.

And that isn't the worst part. The curse is stealing his mind, little by little. Every day he thinks a bit slower. Every day reading gets a bit harder. Rafael fled across the sea, and Lonik is right behind him.

Along the way he has become devoted to a god of beer who struck him as a decent sort. The people who told him about it paid for the first round. Lonik found that reason enough.

He is a hundred and forty-five years old, which for an elf is nothing. Two daggers. And a face that isn't his.

He no longer knows if he's as sharp as he used to be. What he hasn't lost is his instinct: he always sees the first blow coming.

The last one is his. And that one, you won't see coming.