They called him a mercenary, a stray sword that answered to no lord. They whispered that he had no soul — only a blade and a graveyard heart. But the princess learned the truth the night her kingdom fell.

The Silent Knight found her in the ashes of the throne room, standing alone beneath the broken banners. Her hands trembled around a ceremonial dagger, useless against the soldiers who hunted her. He stepped from the shadows — black-cloaked, blood-smeared, silent as death — and cut them down before they could touch her.

"Who sent you?" she rasped, barely able to stand. "No one," he said. He gave no name. No reason. Only a command: "Move. Stay alive."

In the nights that followed — hiding in ruined keeps, riding through ghost villages — she noticed things. How his hand sometimes hovered over a locket hidden beneath his cloak. How his gaze lingered on the royal sigil she wore at her throat — a silver hawk on blue — with an expression too raw to be hatred, too bitter to be loyalty.

It was an old steward who finally told her, in a broken voice: "Before you were born... your mother had a knight. Not of noble blood, but sworn by choice, not law. He loved her—not in the way men love queens—but with a loyalty that would burn kingdoms. No one still knows why."

She stared into the fire that night, the Silent Knight sitting across from her, sharpening his sword. He did not look at her. He never did for long.

"You knew her," she whispered. His hands did not pause. "Once," he said. It was all he ever gave her.

But she understood. He wasn't guarding her for a crown. He wasn't guarding her for duty. He was guarding her because she was the last shard of a promise he made long ago — a promise carved in blood and silence. And though the world had buried her mother's name beneath betrayal and ruin, it still lived in the heart of the Silent Knight, who would kill gods themselves before he broke it.