Chapter 2 The Making of a Weapon
The night was silent, but silence had always been cruel to Seraphina. It was in silence that she heard the phantom echoes of the past, the crack of a whip, the metallic tang of blood in her mouth, the cold command of a voice that had never once spoken her name with love.
She sat curled in the corner of her hidden sanctuary, fingers ghosting over the scars carved into her skin. No one saw them, not even the world that whispered about the “phantom girl” who ruled the shadows. But each mark was a memory, etched deep into her bones.
And tonight, the past came clawing back.
---
The First Lesson
She had been only seven when the training began. A small, delicate thing with wide, frightened eyes. But her parents had not seen a daughter in her, they had seen an investment.
“You are not a child,” her father’s voice had thundered the first night he dragged her into the stone courtyard. “You are a blade. And blades must be sharpened.”
The courtyard was cold, the ground wet with dew, but Seraphina remembered how his men had formed a circle around her. A child in the middle of wolves.
The first test was simple, “survive”.
A boy older than her by three years had been pushed into the circle, a wooden knife in his hand. His smile was cruel, trained. He was not here to play.
“Defend yourself,” her father had ordered.
Seraphina had cried that first night. She had begged. But mercy was a language her father had never spoken. The boy lunged, and she stumbled, bleeding within seconds. She hadn’t known how to fight then, but she learned what pain tasted like.
And when she fell to the ground, her father’s shadow loomed over her, voice colder than the steel he carried.
“On the ground, you are nothing. Stand, or you are already dead.”
---
The Whip
Failure had a price.
At eight, she discovered what it meant to disobey. She had refused one order, to kill a bird brought to her in a cage. Its feathers had been white, its eyes bright and trusting. For one foolish heartbeat, she had thought of keeping it.
Her father had noticed the hesitation.
The whip came down across her back before the bird had even fluttered. The crack still lived in her nightmares. She remembered the fire that seared her flesh, the way her small hands clawed at the ground, trying to escape.
“Compassion,” her mother had whispered as she leaned close, voice like ice in her ear, “is the enemy of survival.”
The bird had died anyway, its blood staining her small palms when they forced her to finish what she had refused. That night, Seraphina had wept until her throat bled. And in the morning, she had looked into the mirror and realized something vital, tears changed nothing.
So she stopped crying.
---
The Breaking
By ten, Seraphina was no longer a child but a weapon in training.
Her mornings began with steel. Her nights ended with bruises. Each day she was forced to run until her legs buckled, to fight men twice her size, to bleed and stand again. And if she failed?
The basement waited.
The basement was not dark, her father had been clever enough to know that darkness could be endured. Instead, it was blindingly lit, every corner exposed. She was left there for hours, chained, with no shadows to cling to, no silence to comfort her. It was in that place she learned the most painful truth of all: loneliness could break you faster than pain.
So she built walls inside her mind. Walls no whip could tear down, no voice could reach.
She became silent.
---
First Kill
Her first kill came at twelve. Not in practice. Not with wooden blades or staged fights. But in the real world, when her parents decided it was time to test the weapon they had forged.
The man had been tied to a chair. Seraphina had not known his name, only that he was an enemy. His eyes were wide, pleading, his voice broken as he begged for his life.
Her father had placed the knife in her hand. “Do it.”
Her hands had trembled. She had stared into the man’s face, searching for some reason, some humanity. But then she heard her mother’s whisper behind her cold, sharp, undeniable.
“Compassion is weakness. Weakness will kill you.”
Seraphina had driven the blade into his throat.
His blood had splattered across her face, hot and metallic. Her hands had shaken violently, but she had not dropped the knife. Not even when the man’s life ended beneath her small fingers.
Her parents had smiled that night. For the first time, they smiled at her.
And that was when Seraphina understood the cruelest lesson of all “love”, if it existed in her world, was something you earned with blood.
---
The Phantom
Years passed, and Seraphina became more shadow than girl. She learned how to disappear, how to strike without being seen, how to make her presence a whisper in the dark. The men who had once laughed at her small size now looked at her with fear.
She was nameless, faceless, untouchable. The perfect weapon.
But in the quiet of her secret place, she remembered the bird. The way it had trusted her, and the way she had killed it anyway. That memory haunted her more than the man she had slaughtered. Because it reminded her that no matter how sharp she became, somewhere inside her, something soft still existed.
And softness was dangerous.
---
Back to the Present
A sharp wind rattled the boards of her safe place, pulling her back from the memories. Seraphina inhaled, steady and slow. She was no longer that child, no longer the trembling girl who begged for mercy. She had been broken, reforged, and remade into something the world whispered about in fear.
But sometimes, late at night, when silence pressed too heavily on her chest, she wondered, had they built a weapon? Or had they built a monster?
Her fingers curled into fists. The answer didn’t matter. What mattered was survival. And survival, she knew, was the only truth her parents had ever been right about.
Still, beneath the steel, beneath the shadows, a small, fragile ember glowed. A longing she could never fully bury.
A longing for something she had never truly known.
Family.
And that longing, though she didn’t yet know it, was the one weakness that would shatter everything.
