One year had passed.
The academy was alive again—
with the sound of swords clashing, students shouting, and wind slicing through the air.
New faces had come.
Old wounds had started to fade.
But not for him.
Not for Rivan.
He stood silently at the edge of the training ground, eyes fixed on nothing.
To the others, he was quiet, obedient, polite.
To the instructors, he was just another hard-working trainee.
But Rivan was something else.
Something darker.
---
He had been waiting.
For a year.
Waiting for the right moment to finish what he was sent to do.
Kara Army didn't just send spies. They created them.
Rivan was once a child without a name.
An orphan picked from the ruins of a forgotten village—
left to rot, until the Kara Army found him.
They didn't give him love.
They gave him purpose.
Through cruel rituals and shadowy teachings,
they erased his memories and replaced them with silence.
No laughter.
No fear.
No kindness.
Only orders.
He was trained not to kill, but to erase.
To infiltrate.
To observe.
To wait.
And if needed, to destroy.
---
His mission at the academy was simple:
Blend in.
Find the talented ones.
Break their unity.
And when the time comes… finish them.
He had done it before. In other villages. In other academies.
But this one was different.
This one… felt human.
---
Somewhere along the way, things started changing.
Parashu sparred with him once and said,
"You fight like you don't care if you win.
Like you're already dead inside."
It wasn't an insult.
It was concern.
And Rivan didn't know how to react to that.
---
In secret, he had begun writing letters at night.
To no one.
To nothing.
Just words scratched into a notebook he would later burn.
"I dream sometimes.
Of fire.
Of screams.
But also… of a woman humming a lullaby.
I don't know who she is.
Maybe… she was once my mother."
---
Rivan began helping weaker students.
Just small things—adjusting their grip, telling them when to duck.
He didn't know why.
Maybe the darkness inside him wasn't as deep as he thought.
Or maybe… it was cracking.
---
One evening, during a rainstorm,
he received a signal.
A crow landed on the edge of the academy wall—its eyes glowing red.
A message from Kara.
Time was running out.
They were planning something.
Something big.
And Rivan had to decide:
Was he still theirs?
Or had he become… something more?
The rain fell harder.
And for the first time in a long time,
Rivan looked up at the sky—
and wondered if he still had a soul.