Others, The Weapon. Zero One.
Designations, not identities.

As if names could soften what she was made into.

Easier to accept.
Easier to exploit. 

They didn’t see a girl.
They saw a project.
A ticking blade disguised in a child’s bones.

But she remembered no lullabies. No mother's arms. No warmth.

Only the cold eyes of scientists and generals.

She didn’t cry when they inserted the needle.
Didn’t flinch when they tested her bones to the point of breaking.
Pain was the first language she learned - 
and the only one they let her keep..

She was handed to the crown at the age of four - an unwanted child passed on like a cursed object.

They feared what she could become. So they carved her into something worse.

 An asset.

 A monster.

 An emotionless, inhuman creation with devastating strength.

They raised her in coordinates, not a home- 
a cold facility buried beneath the kingdom’s frozen bones.

Her earliest memory was of being strapped to a table, the smell of ozone in her lungs,

and a man with glassy eyes saying, “Don’t blink, child. Pain is proof you're still useful.”

In training, she learned to slit a throat before she learned to tie her shoes.
By five, she could disarm a grown man.
By eight, she could kill one in under a minute.

And by sixteen, the monster they made had ended a decades-long war. Alone. Unshaken. 

Her name still forgotten, her victories remembered only in whispered tales of terror.

The war ended.

So did her usefulness.

They shot her. 

Not an enemy, but her own side. A bullet, clean through, meant to kill her from behind. 

Because when a weapon grows too strong, it must be broken before it chooses to bite. 

She didn’t scream. 

She didn’t understand. 

Lying there, half-buried in the crimson snow, she felt nothing but the cold pressing against her skin, and blood- her own, trailing from her lips. Her fingers clutched her abdomen, breath shaking, limbs trembling as her vision blurred. 

Her breath came in slow clouds.
Her ears rang with silence.
And still, her mind whispered one final command: don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t exist.

“Wasn’t this what I wanted…?” 

Her thoughts were quieter than the wind. 

“To finally... disappear?” 

But her body, betraying her once again- shifted. 

Her organs moved, avoiding the vital blow. 

Something deep within refused to die. And she hated it. 

She rose. 

Or something close to it. 

She stumbled into the snow, a trail of red unraveling behind her like thread from a broken doll.

No name. No direction. Just a body dragging what the soul had abandoned.

Her feet dragged like rusted chains.
Her shadow didn’t follow.
Even the snow seemed to avoid her.

With every step, old voices echoed through her mind:
“You exist to obey.”
“You don’t feel. You function.”
“You are not a girl. You are a legacy of fire.”

Snowflakes caught in her lashes. 

She was losing warmth fast. 

Then -

Footsteps. Distant at first. 

Many. Horses. Steel. 

An army. 

She turned her head with effort, eyes glassy and empty. 

And standing before her, in the far distance atop the white-coated hills, flew the banner of the North. 

The Sigil of House Claudian.

A black falcon on crimson skies.

Among them rode a man known not for mercy, but for unwavering command. 

The Duke of the North. 

Kaeliath Vireon Claudian. 

They called him the Crownless Warden of the kingdom.
The lone barrier standing between mankind and the monsters it created.