Since the Evertree fell, Erdas had been a place of darkness.

The bond that once held everything together was reduced to dust, and no human could do anything about it. The world, once bright and filled with light, love, and joy of being worthy, was now covered in shadow. Long, and endless shadows.

The rise in crime had long since been noticed, with rogue gangs running through streets and pirates stealing from ports. Assassins dominated the nights, taking lives left and right, whenever they pleased or whenever they saw fit. The world that had once been full of balance was on the verge of falling apart without the bond which humans managed to destroy with their own hands.

Lujain was one of the assassins who had taken the world into her own hands, making her own path as she slowly clawed her way through shadows to find some beacon of hope. Like all children, even the murderers, she craved a bondage she would never know. Those children who would have been worthy of such a special connection felt empty, incomplete. Back then, the worthy were cherished. Now, the worthy had to endure what they could not control.

They were damned.

The assassin would have been worthy. She felt in her mind a longing for a bond that would never exist. She was sixteen years old now, long past the day she would have called her spirit animal. But thanks to her ancestors, it was a connection she would spend her life without.

Standing on the bedroom window of a young noble boy, Lujain, more commonly referred to as Destroyer, held her sword out to her side, ready to strike and end this life as she had been ordered. He slept on, soundly, unaware of her presence. With her luck, he would never know she was here — that would be the easiest way this could go down.

Silently, she crept off the windowsill and toward his bed, her weapon held at the ready in case she was surprised. The Destroyer knew that guards were stationed outside his bedroom since she had murdered his sister two weeks prior. She needed to be careful, or else she would not be returning to the King of Eura with her prize. Life in prison was not on her list, not now.

She came to a halt right above him, tilting her masked face to stare down at him with interest. This boy was a year younger than the assassin, still grieving for his sister. He was a handsome victim, she admitted to herself, shifting the grip on her weapon in silence. Why her master wanted him dead was beyond her — it wasn't her place to question his choices.

Her sword twitched, and the Destroyer lifted her wrist in order to execute this swiftly. Despite being an assassin, she still held a degree of honor, and wouldn't like her target to suffer for long, if at all. Her eyes found the carotid arteries on either side of his windpipe, and she used those to her advantage. A single strike left the throat torn open, and his breath stopped almost instantly. She smirked behind her mask, he hadn't even woken.

Destroyer lifted her head, tearing her gaze away from her task and moving around the bed in silence, toward his dresser. Her goal had been a kill mission as well as something else — thievery. Normally, only the lowest assassins stole from their victims, but the King of Eura had requested she bring him a specific jewel from the boy's bedroom, something he called The Eye of the Morning — a prize that had been in this family for generations.

Eura's king was a greedy man, a selfish one who held no respect for family. He stole from his people and gave executions almost weekly, just for his entertainment. Others — like Lujain herself — were forced to watch their families die in unfair fights, and then were sold off to the king as slaves or — if worthy — assassins. He never tired of making children miserable.

He treated his own family like garbage, abusing his daughters and killing any sons born before their fifth birthday. She had taken part in the murders of all seven of his sons, and tortured his two daughters to near death each week. Three queens had died at his hand, and the fourth was to marry within the next month or so.

The Destroyer was simply a pawn to his power, whether she liked it or not. She was compelled to obey him, or else face the same fate he gave to his daughters. She admitted that it was no easy task to torment the eleven-year-old princesses, Vivian and Eliza, for their father's entertainment, but if honesty were vital in this life, the young assassin would have been out of the picture years ago.

She knelt and opened a drawer at the bottom of the dresser, her breathing strangely quiet. There was a royal blue box, decorated with gold — the two colors of Eura. The seal on the lock depicted a wolf, howling alongside a sleeping boar.

Destroyer was one of the few people left in Erdas who believed the legends. The fifteen beasts who once roamed Erdas as Guardians. Later, after they were killed, the immortal beasts were reborn as spirit animals to once again defend the world.

Eura had been the home of the Packleader, Briggan the Wolf, and his summoner, a shepherd boy. Later on, the Boar of Eura, Rumfuss, was summoned by a noble, and they had lived long lives filled with adventure before the summoners suddenly died.

People believed it was their deaths and the Beasts' insanity that led to the explosion that destroyed the Evertree, and the bond along with it. Lujain herself didn't know. She hadn't taken the time to ponder the legends into such depth — all she knew was that the stories were real and that others could argue about that with her forever — her view wouldn't change.

Destroyer used a small dagger on her belt to break the seal of the box, before sheathing the weapon and lifting the lid open carefully. Within the case was a very dark blue jewel centered in a golden plate.

The Eye of the Morning.

The assassin smirked and lifted the prize from its case, placing it within her cloak pocket and rising gingerly to her feet. She made her way toward the window, passing the dead boy in his bed once again as she did so. Her figure paused beside him, a hesitation she would live to regret, and she murmured a silent goodbye to the boy who would never live to adulthood.

As she was turning away to make her escape, Destroyer became aware of voices.

"The heir has been silent for a while. Doesn't he sleep talk?"

"Perhaps we should check in."

The assassin narrowed her eyes and quickened her pace while maintaining silence as she moved with liquid grace toward her escape. The door clicked, and two grown men entered the bedroom as soon as Destroyer made contact with the window.

Dead silence.

She turned to face the guards almost mockingly, her sword at her hip and arms crossed. Her masked eyes were narrowed. "Can I help you, boys?"

The taller of the two, a big man with muscular arms and a thick beard, stared at her with hard eyes, while the other — slightly shorter and much thinner — observed the dead boy in his bed with a sick, shocked expression.

Destroyer waited calmly, shoulders shoved forward and posture tall, smiling beneath the black cloth pressed against her face.

"You—"

"I killed him." She turned her expression, blank and void, toward the corpse. "Yes, that's exactly what I did." Her tone dropped, but dripped like honey from her lips. "You must think me blind, or stupid. He's dead, a token of what an assassin lives for."

The big bearded guard slitted his eyes. "The king put you up to this, didn't he?"

"Who else?" Destroyer lifted her head and gracefully backflipped off the window, landing on the ground in the manor's gardens with a grace rarely found in anyone. The night cloaked her body, like a warm blanket she held so close at that moment for cover as she slunk through the blackness with feline elegance. Behind her, the hounds barked, but she was already long gone, and she wasn't planning on being found.

Silent as the air, she traveled through the aristocratic part of town, using alleys and shadows to her advantage. Like always, the world around her was silent and still, save for the sound of flickering torches.

With her mission being complete and it still being rather early in the night, Destroyer decided to hit a few more middle-class homes and loot them for her own convenience, because in her mind there was no harm in a little extra cash to spend on herself when she wasn't sent on missions.

The raids were successful, and Destroyer found herself with enough money to feed and clothe herself for at least a month, since the king didn't think to do so for his personal murderer.

That was fine. She could provide for herself.

Swinging the stolen necklace in her hands with a strange sort of grace, the assassin made her way to the center of the town, finding herself before the great center statue.

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she observed the stone monument before her, searching her mind for what she had been told about its legend.

Apparently, before the deaths of Rumfuss and Briggan, the two Beasts forged this image from their talismans in a half-crazed state. To be honest, Destroyer thought that a giant sculpture of a golden-eyed dragon was out of place in the town square, and she wasn't the only one who thought so. There had been numerous votes over the years to tear it down, but none could ever bring themselves to do it. She herself wouldn't mind seeing it gone, it was absolutely ridiculous.

The image carved from stone was said to display elegance, standing on three legs with the fourth raised up, reaching for the setting sun. Its eyes — made of real gold, she presumed — were staring down at the square, almost as if it were some sort of guardian angel.

Ridiculous, she told herself.

But, as silly as it looked, it did provide cover.

Slipping closer under the cover of shadow, Destroyer placed her slim figure between the talons of the front leg of the statue, hidden from view of the general public. She plopped her bag of stolen items further into the hole and curled up. Her gaze lifted to stare up at the stars twinkling high overhead, carefully guarding her and everyone else in the town. From what, she didn't know. It was a gut feeling she had learned to trust.

The night went on, eerily silent.

After some time, the young assassin started up a quite melody in the form of a hum, to rid herself of the prickling sensation that was playing at the edge of her mind.

Her voice carried even in the still night air, and she felt herself be fired with energy she didn't often feel as she continued.

Slowly, against her will, Destroyer became rather tired as she hummed her tune, and the stars she stared at blurred together in a mass of silver light. Her ears were ringing, with the lost melody as well as something else — a rather unpleasant feeling.

And then, she succumbed to the darkness of sleep.

The walls were ringing.

Destroyer didn't know where the melody was coming from, but it faded into the background, like a song stuck in her head for days that one just learned to ignore until it went away.

Where was she? She didn't remember traveling anywhere, let alone to this place, which seemed to be a dark cave or tunnel of some sort. It was cold, yet the sheer confusion of her situation gave her a shocking amount of warmth.

The wind howled in her ears, an ominous sound that spelled out something the assassin could not place. She wandered deeper into the tunnel, what she assumed to be further in as that is what she was facing.

The melody was muffled by the closeness of the cave walls against her, as well as the dark howl of the wind. Destroyer ignored it and took a few more steps, coming to a halt when she reached an opening, a wider cave than the one she had just come from. Torches lined the walls, illuminating her hooded form and showing to her the secrets on the wall.

Destroyer slitted her eyes and brushed her gloved hand along the stone walls, shocked when she felt what seemed to be life flowing from the faded images scattered along the enclosure.

"This is the story of the Beasts." She breathed as she got a good look at the paintings. There was a wolf, leopard, panda, and falcon along the left wall, and it showed the bloody battle that took their lives before they became spirit animals to the four humans who became heroes. Further along, she saw the other eleven beasts — the elk, swan, ape, serpent, eagle, ram, boar, elephant, polar bear, lion, and octopus — sacrificing themselves to the Evertree and also being reborn as spirit animals.

The entire story decorated the walls like wildly placed fragments. But to Destroyer, she was staring at history. There was a pattern here, one that she followed with ease as she trailed along the timeline and came to a halt at the end.

Her fingers rested on the final image, a circle of the fifteen guardians as they created the statues that lived on each continent.

She examined the words written beneath this last painting.

"This is a story older than time, written in stone, it is the story of a journey made, the story of a love lost.
A spirit forgotten, then met again and again.
Your story, your story, all of your stories.
Ordinary, Great, Spirit, and Great again.
Now and forevermore."

The words held a deeper meaning to the assassin as she studied them for some time, eyes narrowed.

"Fascinating, aren't they?"

She whipped around at the sound of a voice she had never before heard. Her sword in hand, she scanned the dimly lit cave for any sign of life.

Her eyes locked on a huge figure coming from the entrance tunnel, cloaked by shadow. Blue eyes glinted as the thing approached.

"Who are you?" She barked, jerking her weapon toward the silhouette, alarmed.

The creature revealed itself as it entered the cave — a huge gray wolf as large as a horse, with eyes the color of the ocean's depths. "You should know, Destroyer. My ancient soul has roamed the currents of Erdas for generations."

Something within her clicked as she stared in dismay at the beast before her. "Briggan." She breathed, her sword lowering. Still, she kept up her stance.

The wolf blinked and dipped his head. "You are correct."

"What are you doing here? What am I doing here?"

Briggan lifted his gaze to the painting behind her, a wistful expression clouding his canine features. "We are here to fulfill a promise."

Was that a note of sadness to his tone? Destroyer glanced back at the image as well, and read the words inscribed beneath once more. "What promise?"

"The promise that we Great Beasts made a very long time ago." The wolf responded in a low tone. "Rumfuss and I have agreed, you are the one."

She didn't bother asking what that meant. "Rumfuss . . ." Her gaze flickered toward the entrance of the cave once again. "Is he here?"

Briggan nodded slowly. "He is. He should be here any second."

No sooner than he spoke did the clatter of hooves reach Destroyer's ears. Another large animal entered the cave, an enormous boar the size of a carriage, with tusks as white as the moon's light.

Rumfuss.

Destroyer took a deep breath. "So you are real."

The two Beasts lowered their heads. "Once, perhaps. But no longer. Our time passed long before your time, Lujain." Briggan's voice was a deep rumble that shook the ground.

"My time . . ." She looked between the two. "What do you mean?"

Rumfuss snorted. "The time . . . has come . . . for new Leaders to . . . rise."

Briggan nodded. "And one of those leaders is you."

"Me?" The assassin tipped her head to the side. "Why me?"

"You will learn of your worth soon, dear child." The wolf answered. "For now, listen. There is not much time."

"Time for what?"

"For what we can tell you." Briggan gazed around at the paintings. "You are one of the children who has been chosen. Your birth has brought hope for Erdas as we know it."

Destroyer listened, stunned at these words.

"We give you . . . a gift. Rare . . . terrible . . . needed." Rumfuss grunted. "Use . . . him . . . for good."

"Him?"

A bright flash of light, and suddenly, Lujain felt the flesh on her arm burning.

She looked down at the black tattoo imprinted on her skin. Briggan spoke. "This is the fulfillment of our promise. Cherish this gift with everything you have, Destroyer, for it is the only hope."

The assassin gasped. "That's impossible." She breathed out, her voice failing her. "The bond . . . it doesn't exist."

Rumfuss bowed his head. "You . . . are chosen . . . to save what . . . remains."

"How does this help me?" Destroyer pleaded. "Please, tell me!"

"Find the others, Destroyer. Erdas needs you." Briggan rumbled as the edges of the world around her began to fade away.

"Wait!"

Then, everything shattered.

The assassin jerked awake, eyes wide with alarm. Light spilled down from behind the statue, like a barrier between her and the sun.

Destroyer shook her head to clear the massive headache and stood up, slinging the bag over her shoulders. Her arm burned with a strange sort of pain, and she looked down at it, pulling at her sleeve in curiosity.

"Freeze, assassin!"

At those words, the girl shot to her feet, cursing herself when she saw dozens of armed guards closing in around her. She shifted the bag on her shoulders and stepped back, eyes narrowed to slits as she felt her back brush the smooth stone of the statue.

At the moment of contact, a dizziness overtook her. Destroyer, staggered, overcome by the sheer force of the pain that followed. Like a burning ember had been swallowed, a fiery heat spread through her body, a heat unlike any she had ever experienced before in her life. She had been burned before, but that was different. This pain felt empowering, like it was strengthening her.

A massive boom thundered from all sides, and the ground trembled beneath her feet. She was aware of the guards yelling out in alarm, but she managed to stay upright as the shaking grew more intense.

Light flashed multiple times, blinding the assassin.

Then, a loud groaning sound enveloped the square, coming from behind Destroyer.

There was an earth-shaking roar, and the statue burst to life as if it had been waiting for this moment forever. It threw back its head and roared again, flinging open its wings and standing over Destroyer protectively.

The assassin had no words.

She noticed the guards backing away, weapons raised in alarm. At a moment like this, the assassin would have done the same thing, but she didn't, in fact, she didn't even reach for her weapons. She was strangely calm.

The dragon above her was a striking silver color, with bright eyes the color of pure gold. Her whole body was sparking with new energy, but a cool, chilling energy as if the night sky had descended upon her, as she reached out and touched the beast's leg with her gloved fingers.

A new kind of warmth spread through her body, fast and brilliant. Her senses sharpened, and strength flooded her like nothing ever before. When she opened her eyes, she could tell just what she was going to do.

The dragon was huge, and he was completely still.

Then, all Hell broke loose as the assassin lunged for the nearest guard, sword raised. Her weapon cut neatly through them, and her bright eyes watched them fall to the ground in a limp motion, a puddle of blood forming beneath their head.

Destroyer was faintly aware of her dragon fighting the guards who dared to approach him. She could feel his movements as if they were her own, as if they were one creature rather than two. His roars were music to her ears.

She made it through the mass of guards and kept going, not looking back once except to see if the dragon was following. The sound of thunder was prominent as he lifted off the ground with a massive flap of his enormous wings and claimed the sky as his own without a second thought, following the assassin girl from above.

Destroyer ran until she was clear of the town and clear of anyone who might come after her, coming to a halt at last in a stretch of woodland that held strong against the howling wind that at that point sounded so welcoming.

The dragon landed in a clearing before her, huge and magnificent against the rising sun. For the first time, the assassin was able to get a clear, good look at him, taking in those shining silver scales and dark golden eyes that reflected the light of the midday sun so brightly. His figure seemed to glitter with starlight, and he was massive, the largest creature she had ever seen in her life. He was definitely longer than two blue whales, and mulch taller than four giraffes. She locked eyes with him, and reached her hand forward.

The creature grunted out, and lowered his head to allow his nose to touch her outstretched fingers without much hesitation. Her hand brushed the smooth scales of his face, taking in the feeling of him and treasuring it.

So this was what the Beasts had meant by chosen. She had a spirit animal!

And not just any spirit animal. This was a dragon, created by Briggan and Rumfuss just for her, their Chosen One.

It was kind of funny to Destroyer, really. Of everyone in Erdas, they had picked her for the spirit animal bond. An assassin with blood on her hands that even a tsunami could not wash away.

Here she stood. A killer, a monster — a destroyer, as her name suggested.

Here she stood, one of the worthy.

Her eyes misted as she looked at the dragon. He was staring at her.

"There are others." She spoke to him, keeping her voice strong and steady. "More like you and me, right?"

He snorted and raised up his head, towering over her. It was an invitation.

Destroyer chuckled bitterly. "Who says I'm for the job?"

Another grunting noise caused her to break into a smile.

"You're right." She admitted. "I don't like what Erdas has become since the bond fell. But I've never known it any different." Her head tilted back to stare at the creature. "This all happened before I existed, before my time. Why me?"

The beast swished his tail as he watched her calmly.

She sighed deeply, finally letting it go. "Fine, then. We'll go find the others. You and me, no loyalties, okay?"

He seemed to like that, because he turned around and looked over his shoulder at her — inviting her to climb on.

Destroyer grinned under her mask as she obeyed him, feeling the cool crispness of his starry scales. His wings raised up, and he lifted off into the sky as a thunderous flap shot him into the air, the clouds whisking away as they bowed to his mighty figure.

He flew, and as he flew, Lujain saw him lift one talon to reach toward the setting sun.