The Assassin's vow

Before she was Iris Dax, she was Ingrid Voss, born in the smoke and steel shadows of East Berlin.

Her father was a name no one dared speak aloud, Karl Voss, ex-intelligence officer turned arms broker. Ruthless, brilliant, and utterly untouchable.

Her mother was a ballet instructor with hollow eyes and silent bruises.

Iris ingrid then learned to speak multiple languages before she could tie her shoes. Learned to pick locks by eight. How to disable a man twice her size by ten. Not because she wanted to.

Because survival had terms. And she understood them early.

When she was eleven, her mother disappeared. Officially, a suicide.

Unofficially? Ingrid found the torn note and the blood on the keys.

Karl never spoke of her again.

He trained Iris harder after that.

"There are two kinds of daughters," he told her once. "Dead weight… and weapons."

She chose to be a weapon.

At fifteen, she executed her first mission.

A cartel runner in Marseille.

She wore a red coat and smiled at him like a child. When he leaned down to ask if she was lost, she stabbed him through the eye.

Karl was proud.

He bought her ice cream afterward.

Karl Voss, a ghost among ghosts. His name was whispered in military circles and feared in covert rooms. He taught his daughter to kill not out of necessity but obsession. Control. Ego. She was his project. His legacy. And when she began to outgrow him, he made a fatal mistake.

He underestimated her.

On her seventeenth birthday, Iris laced his drink with a neurotoxin he had trained her to resist.

He collapsed at 9:14 p.m.

She watched him seize. Watched his pride turn to horror. Then watched his breath stop.

She didn't cry.

She didn't bury him.

She left Berlin that night with a new name, a forged passport, and every encrypted file he ever kept on the Eight.

Because Karl Voss wasn't just a monster.

He was connected.

One name burned through every file: Desmond Vale.

He had laundered money for Karl. Protected him. Silenced witnesses. All for power.

And when Karl needed an enemy eliminated, Desmond recommended the Eight.

That enemy had been Ayla Everett's parents.

Iris didn't want justice.

She wanted fire.

She tracked Desmond for two years, working jobs across borders, eliminating those who tied up her father's secrets. And when the opportunity came to transfer into Vanguard Academy…

She said yes.

Not to hide.

To burn everything down from the inside.

Back in the present, Iris stood on the clock tower's balcony, staring into the midnight fog. She could feel Ava's gaze on her from across campus.

A soldier.

A sister in rage.

But sisters still bleed.

And only one of them would get the kill shot.