The Academy did not allow for rest in the traditional sense.
There was no bell signaling dawn, no rooster crowing at the edge of a quiet field. Just the cold breath of morning seeping through stone walls, and the rustle of stiff sheets as bodies rose without protest. The room stirred like a colony of insects—efficient, quiet, automatic.
Izen was already awake when the others rose.
He hadn't truly slept. Not in the way he used to, back when nights meant security and sleep was something you slipped into like a blanket. Here, his eyes closed only because the darkness behind his lids was marginally softer than the one around him.
He stared at the ceiling and counted the time between his breaths. Seventy-three heartbeats before the door clicked open.
Right on cue.
The masked instructor who entered gave no name, only motioned.
They were taken—again in silence—through a narrow corridor lit with faint violet lanterns. Every hallway in the Academy was carved of dark stone. No windows. No warmth. Just oppressive geometry, leading ever downward.
Some of the students whispered theories after lights-out. That they were underground. That the Academy was carved into a mountain. That outside, the world had already ended and they were the last survivors being turned into weapons.
Izen didn't speculate. He observed.
The air held no wind. The temperature never shifted. Even the torches were smokeless.
They were below something. That much, at least, he knew.
The second day of lessons began in a different chamber—long and narrow, like a hall of worship.
The walls here were etched with faded reliefs. Scenes of conflict. One showed a man stabbing another beneath a bridge. Another depicted a woman slipping poison into a goblet while bowing. Subtle kills. Hidden hands.
Assassination as a tradition.
Izen paused for a heartbeat as the group entered. He stared at one of the panels—a barely visible etching of two children, back-to-back, surrounded by shadows.
The figures reminded him of something. Of someone.
He didn't linger. He filed it away.
Renn waited for them near the far wall. Vellin was already standing beside him, eyes sharp, arms at her sides like a soldier awaiting inspection. She hadn't spoken since yesterday, but Izen could tell she hadn't forgotten the way he'd unbalanced her rhythm. There was tension in the line of her shoulders.
Good. Let her sharpen it into something useful.
Renn nodded once when Izen joined them, then gestured toward a blank square of stone behind him.
"This wall listens," he said.
Izen raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Vellin didn't even blink.
Renn continued. "Every step you take within ten meters is tracked. Pressure plates below. You won't feel them. But they're there. We use this space to measure pace precision."
He took a small glass orb from his belt. It looked like a toy, delicate and unassuming. He held it out.
"Catch."
Izen did. His fingers closed around it just as Renn released.
"Now move."
It was harder than it seemed.
Renn gave no instructions on where to step or how to walk. Only that he should keep pace with himself—the rhythm he'd established from the moment the orb touched his palm.
Every slight deviation in weight or tempo triggered a soft chime from the wall behind him. The orb vibrated when he strayed more than a fraction off-tempo.
By the fifth pass across the wall's length, Izen's calves burned and his brow dampened with sweat.
It wasn't physical strain. It was focus fatigue. Like threading a needle with every motion of his body.
Renn observed with quiet intensity.
Once, he murmured, "You're half a beat late." Another time: "You're preempting your own left step. Match your center."
Izen gritted his teeth but didn't argue. The corrections were accurate.
Vellin took her turn next. She moved like a shadow cast by candlelight—thin, wavering, hard to pin down. But even she slipped more than once. Her frustration showed only in her breathing.
They rotated drills for what must have been an hour.
Izen lost track of time halfway through.
And that was when it happened.
He was pacing the final length of his sixth pass when something... bent.
It wasn't visible. It wasn't even physical.
But he felt it—like a pocket of wrong air, a tension behind his ribs that didn't belong. The space around him hiccupped, and the orb twitched in his hand, pulsing once in warning.
He froze. Breath held. Body locked.
The moment passed.
He looked back at Renn—but the instructor's face remained impassive. Had he seen it? Had he noticed the distortion?
Nothing in his posture gave it away.
Izen continued walking.
But inside, he was reeling.
It wasn't the first time something like that had happened.
The first had been months ago. Back in the city. Before the Academy. Just after—
He swallowed the memory.
The distortion in the chamber during the mirror test. The way his reflection had moved before he had. These weren't coincidences. And now… again. During a drill designed to test pacing and rhythm. Something about these exercises pulled the anomaly forward, like bait.
But it wasn't controllable. Not yet.
Whatever it was, it existed beneath his skin like an unopened wound.
And he couldn't let anyone see it.
Not yet.
After the drill, Renn had them sit against the wall. Vellin kept her eyes on the floor. Izen closed his for a moment, regulating his breath.
Then Renn spoke again.
"Rhythm isn't about grace," he said. "It's about predictability. Control your rhythm, you control your environment. You choose how others react to you. You decide when and where their attention goes."
He walked slowly before them.
"A good assassin doesn't just hide in shadow. He builds it. Shapes it."
Then he knelt beside Izen.
"And you. You're learning fast. Too fast."
Izen kept his expression neutral.
"I've done similar things before," he said.
Renn tilted his head. "Have you?"
He didn't press further.
But Izen filed the interaction away. Renn had noticed his growth. That was both a victory and a threat.
He needed to manage how much he stood out. Just enough to avoid being discarded. Not enough to become a threat.
He let Vellin win the next drill.
Later that day, the students were taken to the mess hall—if it could be called that.
It was a large, echoing stone chamber with long, windowless tables. Each student ate in silence. No clatter of cutlery. No conversation.
Izen sat across from Deros for the first time since arrival. The other boy's knuckles were raw, scraped clean in uneven patches. Some kind of blunt-force training, probably.
They didn't speak. But Deros gave him a long look. Not hostile. Not friendly.
Curious.
As if trying to decide what sort of person Izen truly was.
Izen didn't look away.
When the day finally ended, and they returned to the dormitory, Izen lay again beneath the cracked ceiling.
He traced the pattern of the breaks above him with his eyes. This time, he didn't imagine stories or battlefields. He imagined pressure plates. Vibration orbs. Timing drills.
And the thing inside him.
The way it hummed faintly in his spine after that moment of distortion. Not pain. Not power.
A kind of echo.
He wasn't sure if it was something he could grow. Or something that might one day consume him.
But either way, it was his.
As he drifted toward sleep, something stirred in the bed beside his. A breath. A shift in weight.
Then a whisper, barely audible.
"I saw you."
It was Vellin.
He didn't move. Just opened one eye and stared at the ceiling.
"You slipped," she said. "But the orb didn't vibrate."
Still, he said nothing.
A pause.
Then: "You're not normal."
He waited a moment before answering, voice low.
"Neither are you."
Another breath. Then silence.
She didn't speak again.