The blade calls in many ways. Through violence, through necessity, through birthright.
The bell rang for dinner, and Katarina, in the tallest room of her family's estate, ignored it. There was a window in this room—just one—under the rafters in the vaulted ceiling and right next to a bookcase packed with withered scrolls. The window was small, frosted, and old. Even from the floor Katarina could tell its latch was rusted, and whenever the rain surged and thunder boomed across Noxus Prime, the latch rattled.
As if it wanted to be opened.
She'd been in her before with her father, on the days when he'd pick out a random bunch of scrolls and books before sunrise, and only stop reading them long after sunset. Each time he would give her new readings, to 'cement in that brain of yours.' She would read about the world, of the false kingdom Demacia, which she still pronounced as 'Demashia,' and of history, how a horrible evil was defeated by her ancestors and created Noxus on its grave, and of warfare, how one swordswoman could cut down five men who were stronger than her. In her almost five years of life, they had always been her favourite days.
But now she was up there alone. Ignoring the call of dinner with father, and mother, and her little sister Cassiopeia, eying a window that beckoned her with a freedom she didn't understand but wanted all the same.
Her father had climbed many things since Katarina could remember anything. Walls, trees, carriages, towers. All were as easy as the simple act of walking for him, no matter the height, no matter the material. It was as if he grew invisible wings and glided to the top. Her father made it so simple—she could do it too.
She grabbed hold of the first shelf of the great bookcase and lifted herself like a feather on the wind. Scrolls rolled out of their place and fell to the floor when Katarina braced herself against the fourth shelf up, dust smattering her eyes and nose. She coughed, and her foot slipped before she saved herself at the cost of a friction burn on her arm. It made her whimper, but she kept climbing. The sixth shelf, the seventh shelf, the eighth. At the top shelf she accidentally kicked a heavy tome out of its place, and it plummeted to the hardwood floor. It landed with a heavy, echoing thud.
Katarina waited at the top; eyes locked on the door in panic. When no one came she smiled. Another thing she'd gotten away with.
She scurried onto the top of the towering bookcase, one of the rafters right above her head. On her stomach, she crawled across it, the window on the other end. At some point she peered off the edge, and the world distended, like a mage had cast a spell and doubled the bookcase's height. Katarina fought back her shudders—no mage could stop her tonight.
The window rattled harder now that she was up close to it. Rain, ever present in the capital, battered the old and shifting glass, and the latch, brown and rusted, was more brittle than she first thought. But she was too small—the latch was too far for her to reach while she laid on the bookcase. Her stubby arms barely grazed the glass before gravity threatened to take her plummeting to the floor, and she knew what the ending to that story was.
Katarina, ever so slowly, began to stand. She used the rafter above her to steady herself, her hands clasped to the thick wooden beam like a monkey readying a swing in the jungles south-east of home. With the measured steps of a noble girl, she stopped at the edge of the bookcase, her toes dipping into the ether.
Again she looked down, and the floor had become a thousand miles away, so far away the little desk with its oil lamp and atlas that had always been tucked away at the end of the bookcase had faded in her vision. She whimpered again, and began to cry, little sniffles tugging the snot from her nose and dribbling it down her chin. She couldn't even wipe the tears or the snot away, because if she let go of the rafter above her, she was sure she'd lose her balance and fall.
Her father wasn't far away. Only a few floors below, enjoying roasted duck with cranberry sauce and diced freshwater lobster, as was the dinner on Thursdays. If she screamed loud enough, he'd hear her, and if not him then at least the estate's majordomo. One of them would come save her, she just needed to call out.
But her scream never came.
Katarina refused herself. She wouldn't scream for her father, not here, not now. The Emperor's words rung in her head like the estate's dinner bell. To be Noxian is not to be strong. To be Noxian is to be strength itself.
But something else boomed in her head. The gongs of The Fleshing Arena smashing right up against her ear amplified by a hundred. It was her father, smiling down at her, holding her close, protecting her. Proud of her.
She sniffled again and drew the snot back into her nose, ignoring the uncomfortable feeling.
The window latch rattled against the rain outside. Another crash of thunder. The latch rattled more.
The world wanted her to do this.
Katarina leapt.
She grabbed hold of the latch, unlocked it in an instant, and then the rain and the wind and the cold galloped in. The window careened back on its hinges, swinging Katarina wildly to the right, smashing her shoulder against the wall. Her grip on the latch slackened.
The rain had already drenched through her clothes and hair, and the wind was making her teeth chatter and her fingers stiff. She tried to swing back around with the window so she could jump to the open ledge, but the wind tonight was powerful. More powerful than her. Stronger than her.
She was too small to reach the ledge from this angle, and she was too rattled from the sudden rush of harsh and biting cold to jump a second time.
Through the open window there were the crenellated, flat rooves of other estates in the district, standing tall in the face of the thunderstorm, flashes of lightning illuminating them for only moments at a time. Katarina could make it to her family's roof. She just had to get to the ledge, climb out, then scale the wall to the crenellations and hop over. It was simple. Her father had done it—she could too.
And then the latch broke, came clean off the window. Screaming over the shattering thunder, Katarina fell.
An arm scrambled for the bookcase. Instead, her wrist slammed against the sharp edge of a shelf and bent backwards and opened a deep gash on the inside of her wrist. She cradled her hand, tears blinding her, and then crashed atop the scrolls she'd shucked on her climb up. There was a crack in her other shoulder, and a horrific throbbing pain kept her curled up on the floor.
Before Katarina could wail for her father, a shadow blocked the light above her.
When she uncurled herself, her father was there. He towered above her, face shrouded by the light behind him, hands clasped behind his back, beard trimmed to the hair, and his military jacket pressed and smoothed to perfection.
She couldn't present herself. The pain wracked her with heavy sobs, her arm, the same one with the bleeding gash on her wrist, refused to move. Her vision was starting to swim, and there was a growing and feverish heat in her chest. "I'm sorry, father," she tried to say, but all that came out were tears.
He crouched down, and with a firm push rolled her onto her back. He ran a slim yet strong hand down her injured arm, putting pressure on certain parts. Katarina squealed when he got to her shoulder.
"You'll recover," he said. "Now, stand."
Hurt as she was, and with him right there, Katarina had no inkling of disobeying her father. With her good arm—the one that had smashed into the wall when she opened the window—she got herself into a low kneeling position, but the second she put her own weight on her legs, another blossoming, throbbing pain shot out from a knee. She collapsed over herself, but her father caught her in his arms before she met the floor a second time.
He stood, and Katarina bawled into his shoulder. "You'll recover," he whispered in her ear, and she heard it even through the unrelenting storm. He took her from the room and locked the door behind him with a click of his skeleton key. The rain faded into nothingness as they went down the stairs.
"Karan, call for the physician."
"But Lord Du Couteau—"
"Now."
Another click of a lock, and then Katarina was set down in her four-poster bed by her father, with its silverwing feather pillows and fleetfeather sheets that smothered her like she was sinking into the softest quicksand in the world.
Her father lit the candle on her nightstand and sat down on the edge of the bed. His brow was drawn tight.
Katarina kept sobbing, the throbbing in her shoulder and knee making her vision pop to the rhythm of her heartbeat.
Her father opened a drawer on her nightstand and pulled out her red and black handkerchief. He offered it to her. "Clean yourself up."
She took the handkerchief and wiped it across her face, wiping up the dribbling snot and trailing tears in one go before blowing her nose with the same, dirtied side. She kept sniffing and quietly sobbing, but at least she looked presentable.
"What happened?"
"I wanted to go on the roof."
"Why?"
Katarina couldn't keep looking at her father. His eyes were cold, and he hadn't blinked, like he'd transformed into one of the great statues of old Noxian warriors in the city's main thoroughfare. Like he was one of those legendary heroes, and he was mad at her.
"Look at me."
Katarina disobeyed him.
"Katarina."
She pushed her hair over her eyes, then looked again. He scoffed.
"Why did you want to get on the roof?"
"Because you've done it, and I want to do it too."
That made him blink. "And why do you want to do as I do?"
There was the time, only a few months ago, when he took her to the Emperor's palace, and watched as he struck down Emet Sassen not with his blades, but with cutting words, and found more favour with House Darkwill as a result. There was the day where he took her to his assassin guild and marveled as he won every single duel offered by his comrades. And there was the night where House Du Couteau hosted the Emperor's birthday celebration, and her father was more loved than the Emperor himself.
But under his wilting gaze, Katarina couldn't find the words. Instead, she only shrugged.
He was silent for a moment. Katarina held her breath.
"You failed."
"What?"
A scowl started to form. "You tried to do as I do, and you failed."
Her shoulder throbbed harder and she whimpered. "I'm sorry."
"No."
A knock at her bedroom door. "Lord Du Couteau, the physician is here."
Her father stood and Katarina laid back against her pillows, arm limp. "No?"
"You are the heir of the Noxus' oldest house. You do not apologise." He slipped a dagger, hilted with gold, and laid it on her nightstand. "And you do not fail."
He left, and Katarina didn't pay attention to the physician as he set her shoulder and gave her medicine.
Her father's words rolled around in her head unending, each word hitting her harder than her fall in the estate's tallest room, and her eyes never left the blade bathed in soft and fluttering candlelight.
When she fell asleep, Katarina dreamed of glittering steel.