AUTHORS UPDATE OF 2019:
As the owner of this story, all these years after first posting it, I've finally decided to rework the plot and replace the use of the Assassins Creed characters with OCs. I've moved on from the AC fandom, but as the only fic I've ever completed, its still very personal to me, and so I'm hoping I can make something more of it in the future.

If you'd like to see anything I potentially come up growing from this, or my other art, I can be found as StealthCrispies on instagram, tumblr and deviantart. (most active on the first two)

Chapter 1

We did not know we had a ghost until we found that box hidden under a strange slab of stone under the floor of our basement.

Well, actually, I didn't find the box at all; it was my son, Alex, who found it while he was exploring our new house in Eerie, Pennsylvania. Alex always loved exploring when we moved, which we did quite often. My ex-fiancé, Paul, and I had split up a year ago, and even after Alex and I moved to a new place, Paul always managed to find us. Moving always seemed like a safer option than dealing with him.

It had been nearly six months since we last heard anything of Paul. I thought Alex and I would finally be free of trouble, and could live our lives in safety, until the day Alex made that fateful discovery…

"Mom! I found something really cool!"

My five-year-old son's sudden call from somewhere in the bowels of our new house made me jump up from my coffee at the kitchen table and follow his voice to the dusty basement, where I found him standing on a slab of white marble. I could not help but to think how odd it was to find marble in the basement; the house was not very old, yet the stone looked very weathered with age. Perhaps the house had been built over the top of the stone, or perhaps the previous owners were undertakers. It did look like an old tombstone of sorts…

"Alex, that doesn't look safe, get back over here," I said, but my words fell on deaf ears as Alex bent over and began sliding around some odd panels on the stone. He had always had an uncanny knack for solving puzzles. The low, grinding sound the panels made as they slid against the marble was chilling, like the sound of a tomb being opened for the first time in thousands of years. I froze in my spot.

"That better not be a grave. Alex, if that is a grave we are moving A-S-A-P!" I warned him as he slid the last panel in place.

But his bravery quickly disappeared as the stone rapidly crumbled into dust, and he darted under the basement staircase. I could just barely make out his face peeking out from between the steps. Now it was my turn to be the brave one. I was shaking as I peered into the hole left behind from the crumbled stone. Part of me expected a zombie or a vampire to jump out at me, like in the movies.

Okay, Rio, you're 22 years old, don't be silly, I thought, laughing to myself as I reached into the hole and pulled out an old wooden box.

The box was strange. I had never seen anything like it before in my life. It had six sides like a hexagon, and even though it had been under ground for a while, it was not rotted away like I would have expected it to be. It was heavy, perhaps made from oak or rosewood. When I tipped it up to get a look at a rusted lock which held the box shut, something inside rattled.

"Oh, Alex, it's okay. It's just a time capsule," I reassured him, blowing a thick layer of dirt and dust out of the wood. Alex cautiously emerged from his hiding spot to look at the time capsule over my shoulder. The box looked like patterns had once been painted onto it, but had faded over time. Taking Alex by the hand, we went back up into the kitchen, where I hoped to find a way to open the box to see what was inside.

Initially, I thought to unscrew the hinges and just pop the lid off. However, the box was very old and I could not really see where the hinges were, much less find the screws that held them in place. The lock did not look very strong, so I decided to just open the lid by force. The first attempt at prying the lid off of the box resulted in my breaking the best kitchen knife I had, so I resorted to more drastic measures. I went out to the shed and retrieved the Cat's Paw pry bar that I had used to pry the old nails off the walls in the living room when we first moved to our new house. The pry bar did the trick, and the old hinges popped, allowing us access into the box.

"It's just junk," Alex pouted as he picked up an oddly-shaped pendant. Its chain had long since rusted away. I frowned at a mushy substance that was either old paper or a dead rat. "Cool! A dragon! Here, Mom," he dropped the pendant into my hand and went for a little eagle at the bottom of the box. It looked like it had been carved out of die-cast, or maybe silver.

I turned my attention to the pendant that I was now holding. It had been made from ivory, and had a silver band set into it. It very much resembled the letter A with an intricate semi-circle connecting its lower points. It was very stylish and elegant; it would be excellent to wear at a wedding or something.

But, if I was ever going to wear it, I would have to take it to a jeweler's and get a new chain for it; the remains of the one it dangled from had a broken clasp.

With Alex running around the kitchen making his new 'dragon' fly, I made to dump the mushy contents of the box in the trash can, just incase it something was still alive inside. As I picked the box up, I must have jarred open a hidden drawer or something, as two small daggers and a strange piece of metal clattered to the floor. The noise brought Alex to a halt in mid-run as he went round the table for the eighth time.

What on earth, I thought as I picked the daggers up. They were very well-made, definitely handcrafted by the looks of them; the hilts on the daggers resembled flying eagles. I placed them on the kitchen counter before taking the box outside with the trash.

..xoxoxoxoxox..

The assistant at Chiccarine's Fine Jewelry and Diamond, who I found was also my next-door neighbor, explained to me that the remains of the pendant's chain initially looked beyond repair, but she would give it a chance, anyway. With or without a new chain, the pendant would be appraised, and would be back in my hands in about a week. With that, I could not do anything else but go home and fiddle with the other contents that had been in the box.

I had not thought anything of the daggers until later that evening, when I went to look at them again and see if there were any similar ones on eBay. But the daggers had vanished. I hoped that Alex had not found them; I did not really want to go on a trip to the emergency room.

"Alex have you seen those daggers that were on the counter?" I called up to him, but he failed to hear me. He was in his room playing with his toy knights and the little die-cast eagle, which he kept insisting was really a dragon. From all the noise he was making, I could tell he, and his knights, were in the middle of an intense round of dragon-slaying.

"Hey Trouble, it's bedtime," I said as I walked in his room. His knights were scattered around the floor, while the eagle laid on its back, looking rather dead as one of the knights stood on top of it.

"But Mom! The slayers have just killed the dragon and are going to a party!" he grumbled as I made him get in bed.

"Are you sure they are? They all look dead apart from the one standing on the eagle."

"Mom, it's a dragon!"

"Are you sure? It has feathers and goes squawk! when it flies," I mimicked the best flying motions I could with my arms. Alex laughed. As I pulled the covers up to his chin, his eyes traveled to the far corner of his room and he pulled his arm out from under the blankets to wave.

"Who are you waving at?" I asked, looking over at the corner he had waved at. All I saw was his toy chest, and a small battalion of stuffed animals sitting on top of it.

"Eddy!" he giggled, waving one last time at the corner. I cocked an eyebrow at him

"Eddy? Your invisible bunny, Eddy? I thought you said I drove over him in the driveway at Nan's house, crushing his skull and killing him instantly…" I recalled the day that I had forever banned Alex from ever watching CSI on television again. Alex shrugged at me nonchalantly.

"No, that was Eddie, with an I-E at the end. This is Eddy with a Y. It's his twin!" I nodded at him; of course, it all made sense now.

"Well, say goodnight to Eddy with a Y at the end and go to sleep," I kissed his forehead and saying goodnight before carefully stepping over the pretend battlefield. I reached up to turn the light off, but stopped.

"Oh, Alex," I leaned against the door frame, "did you move the daggers from earlier?"

"No."

I frowned.

"Hmm, must have misplaced them and forgot about it. Goodnight, honey." I shut the light off and retreated to my room.

..xoxoxoxoxox..

It was raining when I woke up the next morning. Getting out of bed, I stretched, and jumped when I saw what I thought had been a figure of a person in the corner of my eye.

Instinctively, I grabbed the baseball bat that I kept beside my bed in case of a break-in. Or worse, Paul. Clenching the end of the bat between my fingers, I turned around to face the wardrobe.

Nothing.

I sighed in relief and propped the bat against the wall again. It must have been my shadow.

I waited until my heartbeat slowed back to normal before heading to Alex's room. Today was Saturday, so I was going to take him shopping. He had grown out of his cloths again. To my surprise, when I walked into his room, Alex was already awake, and he was standing on his bed staring down at an odd sight.

Each and every Lego building block that my mother had bought for him had been built up to resemble a large, twisting city with crooked streets and tall towers. His toy knights were set up in different places, and the die cast eagle was carefully balanced on top of one of the towers.

"Isn't this cool? He built this for me!" Alex shouted me.

"Who is 'he'?" I asked as I inspected the buildings.

"Avalar did! He's my new friend. He's a ninja lion from Camelot."

I blinked at my son, telling myself it was probably a good idea to ban him from watching all of the King Arthur reenactments on the History Channel, if he was going to let his imagination run away with him again.

"Oh. He sounds fascinating…"

Slightly unnerved, I herded Alex into the bathroom across the corridor. It took half an hour get him washed up for the day, as he insisted that he was already clean and would only get more dirty later.

The morning routine is never quick or simple.

After arguing over taking a bath, I decided to give up on getting him to brush his teeth – he'd only go and eat Fruity Pebbles for breakfast afterwards, anyway – so I went to get myself ready to leave the house. I could only hope that the denim jeans and red t-shirt I had dressed him in would stay clean during that time.

Luckily they had, and I was soon wrestling him into his booster in the back seat of my car. I hated the damn thing. Even though Alex was too small to sit in the car without a seat, he was getting to be too big for the booster we had, which made buckling up all the straps an insufferable task.

"Mom, say hello," he held up the toy eagle in my face. All I could manage was an agitated grumble that resembled a strained 'hello.' Alex scowled at me.

"Don't worry, she's always like that in the mornings," he said conversationally, looking down at the toy.

I shut the door on his side and went to the driver's seat. 'Iris,' by the Goo Goo Dolls, was playing on the radio as I drove to the mall. I sang along with the music, listening to Alex as he sang along with it as well. He sang to all of the songs on the radio, ever since I threw the Barney Sing-Along tape out of the window a week before.

It was our first time visiting the mall since moving to our new house. Alex was amazed by the size of it—we spent most of our time in a hole-in-the-wall outlet when we lived in our previous home—while I was just amazed that there was a sale in many of the clothing shops. Perhaps it would not cost so much to keep Alex after all. It wasn't that he had expensive taste in clothing – he would probably run round naked, if I let him – it was that he outgrew what I bought him so quickly. I needed to find him clothes that would last more than two days.

"I want that one," Alex pointed at a hoodie that was on the sale rail. The reason why he wanted it was because it had an eagle on it. Apparently, eagles were this month's "in thing." Last month, all he had wanted was dragons and knights.

But, the hoodie was white, and, when it came to kids, white never stayed clean for long it; even black never stayed clean.

"You can't have it," I said.

"But why not?" He pouted.

"Because you'd never keep it clean."

"You're no fun."

"I'm a mom, I'm not allowed to have fun. But you can. So, go have fun causing chaos at the toy store with Avalar and let me have no fun while I shop," He seemed satisfied with my answer, and he disappeared into the nearby toy store, "Stay near the front where I can see you!"

When I was sure he was distracted, I picked the hoodie off of the rack.

..xoxoxoxoxoxo..

Upon arriving home, I noticed that the television was on, turned to the History Channel. The program that was on was documenting the history of the Crusades.

"The Hashshashin Sect held fast to their control of Masyaf until 1260, when the Mongols—" I frowned at the bloody re-enactment of dirty-looking men dressed in robes and masks wreaking havoc on defenseless townspeople balancing large clay pots on their heads. Alex didn't need to watch that. I quickly changed the channel to Nickelodeon, where Spongebob Squarepants was trying to teach Gary the Snail how to sing.

"Hmm, I could have sworn I switched it off before we left," I muttered, flicking on the light and nearly tripping over Alex on my way to the kitchen as he dashed into the living room and plopped onto the couch.

Something glinted from the corner of my eye, and I gasped and froze when I saw the pendant hanging from the fridge door. The chain looked like some of the links had been reworked, and the clasp appeared to have been mended.

"That's odd. It's not supposed to be fixed until Friday," I mumbled to myself as I took it off the fridge and held it between my fingers.

A flash of movement from behind me made me look into the living room. Alex was standing on the sofa, the hood on the three-times-too-big hoodie covered most of his face. I frowned at him.

"What are you doing up there, Alex? Get down before you hurt yourself!"

"Do you see him, Mom? He's here!" he chirped.

"Alex, stop playing games and get down from there!"

I was about to reach and grab him when he frowned back at me, "Mom, you have to put the necklace on or you won't be able to see him!" I glanced back down at the pendant between my fingers. What on earth was he talking about? He was still staring at me expectantly when I looked back at him.

"See who –"

"Just do it!"

Deciding it was better to just humor my son, I slipped the necklace round my neck and looked up at Alex.

"There, see? I'm wearing it! Now get down from—" I froze, staring into my living room in shock.