The silence returned.
He stood again in the blackstone dome, feet planted where they'd been before—no corridor, no doppelgänger, no echoing cell. Just cold stone beneath his soles and the low blue lanterns flickering overhead. The masked instructors stood in the same places as before, unmoved, as if no time had passed at all. But it had. He knew it had.
Three students were gone. Their places in the arc stood empty.
Nobody spoke.
Izen's breath caught in his throat as the quiet sank deeper into his skin. He didn't glance at Deros. He didn't look to see who was missing. The absence itself was enough. Absence had weight here. A shape.
He breathed through his nose and forced the tremor from his fingers.
He would not be the next one to disappear.
Each of them had been tested. That much was obvious now. But what did it mean to pass?
Was it survival alone? Or something else—something unseen?
The thought gnawed at him. Not out of fear, but calculation. There were too many unknowns. Too many unspoken rules, and silence wasn't just a formality here—it was a weapon. One wielded by the instructors and the Academy itself, shaping the apprentices with every unanswered question.
But Izen had grown up surrounded by silence.
He understood it better than most.
The woman's voice returned.
"When given a mirror, the assassin sees not his reflection, but his flaw. What you faced was no illusion. What bled was no stranger. You may tell yourself otherwise, but you would be lying."
Somewhere deep in the room, a small metallic click echoed. One of the lanterns dimmed.
The voice continued.
"You were each chosen for one reason: you have already committed acts that would make other children unravel. This Academy does not create monsters. It gathers them."
Her words fell like stone. No emphasis. No drama. Just truth, laid bare and without apology.
"You are here because you have no place else to be. You are here because you cannot return."
Izen didn't flinch.
He didn't need to glance inward to know what the voice meant. He remembered too clearly.
The smell of copper and dried lilac oil. The crack in the tile where the body had fallen. The sound of her final breath—not a gasp, but a sigh, like letting go of something she had carried too long.
And the weight in his own hand. The dagger. His own fingers trembling. Not from guilt. Not yet.
Just from the understanding that something had changed.
That he could never unmake what he'd done.
A sudden crack jolted him from the memory.
One of the instructors had moved.
The one wearing the downward-pointing triangle across their mask stepped forward and raised a gloved hand. In it hung a leather cord, from which dangled twelve obsidian tokens. Each one bore a different rune. The figure stopped in the center of the circle and let the tokens fall to the floor.
They scattered like dice.
Another masked instructor approached, the spiral symbol etched into their porcelain face. This one knelt beside the tokens and selected nine—one for each student still standing.
They didn't explain. They didn't need to.
The tokens were a second test.
The spiral instructor approached Izen last.
They held his gaze for a long moment. Their mask had no eyes, no expression, but Izen felt the scrutiny anyway—like a knife pressed just beneath the skin, measuring tension.
Then the token was placed in his palm.
It was heavier than it looked. Smooth, round, slightly warm. The symbol carved into its face was unfamiliar—a jagged curve, like lightning trapped in a circle. Not arcane, but deliberate.
Before he could ask, the instructor had already turned away.
A door opened behind the line of instructors.
Stone slid aside with a low grind, revealing another chamber. Dimly lit, rectangular, with rows of steel mannequins lining the far wall. Between them stood four adults—two men and two women—each dressed not in robes, but in hardened leather and reinforced black tunics. Instructors of a different kind.
One of the robed figures gestured.
"Enter."
The students filed in, single file. Deros walked just ahead of Izen, his posture rigid. Not proud—tense. Like he expected a blade in his back at any moment.
Izen kept three paces behind.
He'd learned early that distance was a shield.
The chamber smelled of oil and smoke.
Each steel mannequin held a different weapon across its chest: sabers, daggers, throwing knives, blowguns, even weighted chains and curved hooks. Some bore cuts across their steel faces, long gouges from training strikes. Others were pristine, unused.
One of the leather-clad instructors stepped forward. A tall woman with a scar that ran from the corner of her mouth to her ear. She looked over the students with thinly veiled disdain.
"I am Instructor Kael," she said. "If you're wondering why you're still alive, don't. It's an accident."
No one laughed.
She stepped toward the line and paced slowly.
"You've been given your token. That token bears the mark of your aptitude. The Academy has no interest in fairness. There is no balanced curriculum here. Some of you will be trained in poisons. Some in illusions. Some in brute force. If you're disappointed, keep it to yourself. Or die."
She stopped in front of Deros and smirked. "You're a brawler. Makes sense. We'll beat it out of you."
Then she reached Izen.
Her eyes narrowed.
She didn't speak at first. Just studied him. She looked at his token. Then at him. Then back to the token.
Something shifted in her expression. Not surprise. More like… interest.
Or suspicion.
"Hm," she said, barely audible.
Then she moved on.
They were split into smaller groups.
Each group was sent to a different corner of the chamber, paired with an instructor according to the rune they bore. Izen was placed with only one other student—a girl named Vellin, small, silent, with the kind of posture that suggested she'd been taught to vanish from sight long before arriving at the Academy.
Their instructor was the quietest of the four.
A man called Renn.
He wore no visible weapon. No badge of rank. Just a dark grey tunic and gloves stitched from old crow-leather. His eyes were pale, almost colorless, and he spoke in a voice just above a whisper.
"You'll call me nothing," he said. "You'll speak only when I ask. And you will fail. Repeatedly."
Then he knelt between them and traced a symbol in the dust.
Izen studied it carefully.
A looped arc. A break in the line. Two dots outside the curve.
It wasn't language. It was instruction.
Renn gestured. "Your aptitude mark is for rhythm control."
Vellin tilted her head.
He continued. "Not music. Movement. You will learn how to pace steps to confuse listeners. How to mirror others. How to control space through timing."
He looked at Izen.
"And eventually, how to use it for far more dangerous things."
Izen didn't ask what that meant.
But his heart thudded once, hard, in his chest.
He thought again of the voice in the mirror-chamber. The double. The hint about seeing time fold.
It couldn't be coincidence.
Had someone noticed? Was this "aptitude" just cover for something they didn't understand?
Or worse—something they did?
He swallowed, kept his face blank, and nodded.
"Good," Renn said.
The lesson began with silence.
Renn had them walk in circles, mimicking each other's footfalls exactly. Then varying them. Then pacing to match each other's breath. It was simple. Repetitive.
But exhausting.
Not physically—mentally. It took intense focus to remain perfectly in rhythm with another person. And when he changed the tempo without warning, it became a battle of instincts. One misstep meant starting over.
Izen failed three times in the first hour.
Each time, he reset faster.
By the fifth round, he began to anticipate Vellin's movements before she made them.
By the sixth, he began adjusting his pace just before she did.
By the seventh… she tripped.
Renn raised his hand.
"That's enough."
Vellin exhaled, clearly frustrated. Her eyes flicked toward Izen once—no anger, only confusion.
He didn't gloat.
He only met Renn's gaze and waited.
The instructor said nothing. Just nodded, slightly.
Then he turned to the steel mannequins.
"The goal is not to lead. Nor to follow," he said. "The goal is to become unnoticeable."
He stepped into the center of the room.
"And when your rhythm is perfect… even death won't hear you coming."
They trained for three hours.
Afterward, they were given small rations—dried fruit, bone broth, a hunk of bread harder than stone. No words. No approval. Just food and a silent dismissal.
The students returned to their quarters in silence, eyes sunken, limbs sore.
Deros walked just ahead of Izen again. This time, his stride limped slightly.
Izen noticed, but said nothing.
Back in the dormitory, the hearth remained unlit.
That night, Izen lay on his back once more, arms folded behind his head.
He watched the ceiling again, but this time, the cracks didn't hold stories. They held memories.
The mirror.
The voice.
The instructor's pause.
And behind it all, a feeling he couldn't shake.
Like a gear, deep in his mind, had shifted ever so slightly.
Something was changing.
Not in the world.
In him.