Rajasthan, India - 1945
Radu Kogălniceanu was a soldier, and he did what soldiers did best.
Soldiers kill.
And so did he.
Until he met her.
The first time Radu met a demon, he felt certain that here, now, was some kind of hellhound arrived from Hades to drag his soul down, down, down, for what he had seen and done in war.
He had watched many friends and many more enemies bleed and die in the trenches across the sea. He had crawled through mud and gore to recover mementos from corpses, and he had survived.
He had survived.
He would survive this.
The demon cornered him in one of the many tiny alleyways of the city, and even with all he had seen, he had to admit it was a disgusting choice. A slimy, long, scaled, black body crept close to the ground, with a long black tongue lathing a thick, flat snout. Every so often as it moved on its multiple legs and claws, it would snarl and gnash, revealing its green saliva and serrated shark-like teeth. Sn insectile cluster of eyes sat dead center on top of its long domed skull. A barbed tail whipped from side to side as it advanced.
He had a knife in his boot, a relic from the war, and a small part of him was glad to have something to kill now that he and all of the Fritzes he had fought against were expected to make nice and coexist.
But these ravenous creatures moved in packs, and when one lay dead, he turned to see more tumbling over each other in desperation to reach him. As they fell, a few speared themselves through their necks with their or another's tail, but there were enough that they moved forward like a shadowy tidal wave.
Radu had hardly a chance to consider crying, fighting, praying, running, when a flash of silver and gold like divine lightning split the first creature into nothingness and dusty smoke.
That was the first time Radu Kogălniceanu met a Shadowhunter.