They called it submission — but in truth, it was a choosing:
To shed the last scraps of mercy, to become the weapon the Light demanded.
To become the thing even the Children feared to name aloud.
Patter received no orders. Only a name.
Jevana Sedai.
Gray Ajah.
Negotiator, spy, manipulator of kings and queens.
A woman so steeped in power that even other Aes Sedai crossed the street to avoid her.
The mission was understood:
Kill her, or do not return at all.
Patter stalked her across two cities and three minor courts. She was cautious — she had outlived many who wished her dead. Wards woven into her very clothing, silent alarms tied to every window and door, Warders who smiled and watched everything.
It was not enough.
Patter watched her until he no longer thought of her as human. Only a knot of threats to be unraveled.
When he struck, it was in the one moment she allowed herself peace — her evening prayers, murmured alone in a side chamber of the High Ambassador's House, the guards kept respectfully at a distance.
She had laid her staff aside.
She had unknotted the dense weaves that shielded her mind.
She had allowed herself, for one foolish moment, to be alone.
He moved silently, a shadow at the edges of the candlelight.
But Jevana Sedai, even vulnerable, was no fool. She felt him — perhaps not his body, but the sheer intent — before the knife touched her throat.
She did not scream.
She did not fight.
She simply whispered:
"Do you even know why?"
Patter said nothing. His orders were not to speak.
"You kill me," she said, voice barely trembling, "and a hundred wars will follow. A thousand will die, screaming for the Light you think you serve."
Her hands were folded. She made no move to defend herself.
"You could stop this," she said, and — Light help him — for a moment, he heard the humanity in her voice. The terror. The desperate hope. "You could choose."
His hand tightened on the dagger.
It would take a single slip — a single heartbeat of hesitation — for her to weave a thread of air and rip him apart.
He did not hesitate.
The blade slid across her throat in a line so clean it made no sound.
Her body sagged against the altar.
Her blood spilled onto the stones — not red, but deep, oily black in the dimness.
The smell of her death, sharp and metallic, filled the little room.
This was not the work of those who served the Light under the open sun, singing hymns and wearing polished steel.
This was the grim work — the spit that polished the gleaming breastplates worn by his compatriots, the filth that kept their banners pure.
Patter wiped the blade on her cloak.
He closed her eyes with two fingers, almost gently.
It was not forgiveness.
It was not honor.
It was only habit.
He slipped back into the night, unseen.
At dawn, they left a single thing at his bunk: a letter, one more quest. The one he had earned.
No commendation.
No welcome.
He had been tested even before his test. He had been found sufficient.
But in the quiet hours before the camp rose, Patter sat alone in his tent, staring at the bloodstains still clinging beneath his nails.
He knew they would never truly wash away.
The Light demanded sacrifices, yes — but it also demanded more, always more, until there was nothing left of the man but the blade he carried.
And there would always be another name, another night, another hollow silence after the work was done.
There was no end.
The Light forgives, but the blade remembers.
**
Under-lieutenant Patter,
You have served with precision and resolve, and though I sense your silence more than your words, I do not mistake your burden. Be assured: the Light leaves no mark on the soul of those who act in its defense. What you carry is not a stain, but a weight—proof that you are forged strong enough to bear it.
Still, I would not have you sit idle beneath such weight. When doubt festers, the surest balm is action. The Shadow recoils from righteous fury, and your hand has already proven itself fit to wield it.
Thus, I command this:
Strike at the heart of the Dark One's servants.
Four Dreadguards walk unchallenged in this world—creatures who twist the Pattern in His name. Two have made their den within the Ruined Keep, where the stones themselves remember the taste of blood. Two more gather strength within the Stronghold of Shayol Ghul, deep in the mountain shadows.
Bring me their scalps.
Let them serve as tokens—not of vengeance, but of justice. A strike so bold will not go unnoticed. The Dark One himself will feel your presence. The blade in your hand will speak louder than the doubts that whisper in your ear.
You were sufficient once.
Prove that you are more.
For the Light,
Pedron Niall
Lord Captain Commander
Children of the Light
**
Patter read the letter once. Then again.
He traced the Lord Captain Commander’s seal with a thumb still stained from Jevana Sedai.
Not a stain. A memento.
He folded the parchment, tucked it into the lining of his coat, and stared into the dying fire.
The silence stretched.
Then, in a voice so quiet it could have been thought:
"So be it. Let the blade speak louder."
**
The Ruined Keep was a scar left to fester.
Its towers had long since collapsed inward, and the wind that swept through its bones carried the scent of ash and old screams. But it wasn’t empty. Two Dreadguards had made their lair there — lovers, it was said, though what passed for affection between Shadowspawn was nothing Patter cared to understand.
He circled the keep for three days. He marked their patrols, memorized the movement of their slaves, the rhythms of their guards. And then, just before dusk on the fourth day, he found the tracks.
Not the neat bootprints of compelled soldiers or hooves of trollocs. These were strange: barefoot, deep, toes spread wide, low to the ground. A pattern of crawling — no, stalking.
Patter followed in silence.
He found the yellow-eyed man crouched behind a toppled statue of a nameless king, eyes gleaming like dusk through smoke. Mud-caked. Skin pulled too tight over a sharp, feral frame. But still a man — just barely.
The stranger didn’t turn. He spoke without looking.
"You came for them too."
Patter didn’t respond. Words were precious.
Patter considered him — the way he crouched low to the ground, the tension in his limbs, the gold in his stare. Something old lived in the man’s bones. A curse, maybe. A choice.
They didn’t speak again.
They didn’t have to.
That night, they moved in parallel, never speaking. One with a deadly warhammer and Patter with his whisper of a blade.
Patter circled through the lower chambers while the yellow-eyed man slipped through cracks in the stone like a shadow given form. The woman died first — clawed at her own face when she saw the feral glint in her killer’s eyes, only to find Patter’s blade waiting beneath her chin.
The man — her so-called lover — died slower. He tried to escape through a tunnel layered in air-woven illusions. Patter moved through them like they weren’t there. He was bleeding by the time it ended, but the Dreadguard was dead — skull crushed, voice stilled.
Patter took their scalps. He offered no thanks.
The yellow-eyed man sat outside the keep, cross-legged in the frost, eyes closed like a monk.
“You’re not what they think you are,” he said softly, not looking up. “The Light doesn’t make knives like you. Not unless it needs something darker than it wants to admit.”
Patter adjusted the scalps in the satchel at his side. “You speak too much.”
“I’ve had no one to talk to. I only cook and hunt,” the man said.
Patter turned to leave.
“Will you kill me?” the yellow-eyed man asked, calm.
Patter paused. He didn’t turn.
“No,” he said. “You’re still hunting.”
He vanished into the trees without another word.
**
The stronghold was worse.
Where the keep stank of blood and had flurries of activity, Shayol Ghul was quiet — wrong in a way the soul could feel. The mountain above it wept black tears. The stones whispered in dead languages when the wind passed through.
There were no allies here.
Only Patter, and the dark.
He moved through tunnels that trembled with old power. Every step was a dare. He carried no light. He trusted his hands, his breathing, the feel of air against his skin. The Dreadguards here were not careless like the others. They had survived centuries. They had stopped pretending to be men.
Patter didn’t sleep. He barely ate. He waited — watching, listening, until the moment came.
The first he poisoned: a needle dipped in dreambane, slipped into the water cistern used by the outer chamber. The Dreadguard convulsed in his sleep, choking on the threads of his own weave. When he died, the walls shook.
The second fought. Fire, ice, compulsion, and something deeper — something that tried to talk to him inside his mind.
Patter bled. He screamed once, just once, then bit through his tongue to stay silent.
In the end, he jammed a broken blade through the thing’s throat and held it there until the corpse stopped twitching.
When it was over, he did not rest.
He took their scalps with hands that did not shake.
Not yet.
He returned weeks later, thinner, quiet as ever.
He dropped all four scalps in silence before the courier. Said nothing. Didn’t wait for thanks.
Back in his tent, he washed the blood from his hands, blood only he could see -- it had been weeks — but not all of it came off.
The yellow-eyed man had called him a knife.
But knives, Patter knew, were only useful until they snapped.
