Chapter Twenty Six, The Greatest Assassin
Dropping the dagger to fend off the bird, everything becomes instantly quiet, as the bird lands on the bookshelf above the bed. Percival, looking down, sees the boy then. Standing in front of him, a look of anger across his young features.
"It was you! You who killed my parents!" Yells the boy at the former Knight. Realizing his mistake, Percival looks at his stomach, only to find Grandfather's dagger again jammed to the hilt into his belly. Reaching toward the boy, as if to strangle his neck, Percival falls to his knees, then to his face, and dies, falling on top of the dagger, pushing it all the way in.
"He was dead… anyway… my boy… the poison on the blade…" Grandfather, holding on to life, says as he looks at his grandson with new admiration. "But you did well, my grandson…" The boy, turning around, rushes to his Grandfather's side. "And now you, my boy, are the last Golden Asp. And I impart it's heritage to you…" With his dying breath, Grandfather touches the boy's forehead with his thumb, and a Golden Light seeps from his hand into the boy. The boy, too shocked for tears, looks at his arm, to find the tattoo of the Golden Serpent thereupon, and the tattoo upon his Grandfather's arm gone.
The Raven, taking a sudden interest in all of this, says to the boy "I told you, you are he!, The Golden Asp, the Serpent's Son! The Greatest Assassin to be! and I don't fib." And the boy knew the Raven was right.