Morning came soft and wrong.
Asher surfaced like a diver breaking into quiet, hand reaching for a weapon that wasn't there—just stiff sheets, wood frame, oil in the air. No smoke. No screams. The kind of calm that shows up after a storm and before the next one.
Vetrax.
The Sorting wasn't a fever. He'd braced himself for Drifters—the House with scuffed boots and second chances. Instead, he woke under the white eagle.
Cain's bunk was empty, sheets flung back like applause. Rainley sat cross-legged on his mattress, breath so even it felt acted. Silas—yeah, Silas—barely registered as a lump under a blanket. Morgan's bed looked arranged, not slept in. Corners razor-tight. Pillow centered like a headstone.
Something about Morgan always seemed off. Like he was a predator in human form.
Asher cracked his lockbox. Uniforms. All he owned. Collars too stiff, seams that rubbed your neck raw. If he had money, he'd buy armor that passed for clothes. If he had money—
He froze, then grinned.
Vetrax meant stipend.
He dressed fast and bolted.
The Admissions line curled around a pillar twice, all murmurs and perfume and the slow scrape of stamped paper. A clerk tapped his name without looking up.
"Asher."
His wrist-comm chimed.
10 credits / day.
His mouth went dry. Back home, ten a day fed a whole dorm for a week. Here, it bought a sigh.
Behind him, two girls wrinkled their perfect noses.
"Ew. Ten? Insulting. I'm telling my dad."
"Whatever. Let's hit the market. Youven's dropped the rain-sole void shoes."
"Two pairs. One for rain, one for when rain is a vibe."
He slid out and let the Academy bazaar swallow him—stalls tucked under stone ribs, sunlight striping the floor. The smell of hot metal, resin, fried batter. Nobles paraded belts with gilt clasps and laughed about "entry-level" armor like it was a joke. At the edge, a kid from the outskirts set copper on a counter. The vendor didn't touch it—"leave it"—and never met his eyes.
Asher's jaw ticced. He kept moving.
Two boys argued by a weapons rack.
"I heard the best plates are here."
"Please, my family smiths put these clowns to shame."
"Most of it's polished junk anyway."
"Yeah? Then why are you buying two?"
Across the lane, a blond first-year with no House emblem stood too still, watching. Blink.
Gone.
Like a cut in the scene.
Asher checked his comm again just to feel the number in his bones. A number meant choices. A second shirt that didn't itch. Boots without holes. Saving, not starving.
"Weekend pass!" Ryvak crashed into him on the stairs, grin cracked across a new bruise. "Tavern? Bad music, worse stew?"
"Rain check," Asher said. "Got things."
"Try not to invent homework," Ryvak called, already drifting toward the laughter.
Asher didn't go up.
He went down.
The mirror room remembered him. Door half-stuck. Lights dying slow. Chalk circles ghosted the floor like fingerprints from a crime scene no one filed. The air had that stale‐cold bite of a place that still listens.
He crouched by the cleanest circle, pressed two fingers to the inner ring, and breathed the way he did in the desert when he decided not to die: in until the world got narrow, out until his hands stopped shaking.
Nothing.
Again. Slower. Honest.
The floor hiccuped.
White.
Paper walls rose. Sun-baked stone settled under his boots. No seams. The room smelled like chalk and rain that never reached the ground. A woman stood barefoot on the mat—bronze skin, black hair pinned with something that wasn't metal, a simple toga cut to move.
"Finally," she said, like he was late to his own funeral. "I'm Gia."
"You're—"
"The part of you that remembers." Her voice made the room hold its breath. "When the Stone fused, the rest of you got loud. You couldn't hear me."
"So you're the Stone."
"In a sense." A thin smile. "I'm the shape your mind allows it to take."
"Why now?"
"Because you stopped pretending you don't want power." Her eyes dipped to his hands. "You're still afraid of being eaten by it. Good. Fear is a brake. We'll build the engine next."
He swallowed the flinch. "Teach me."
"Stand."
He did.
Gia circled—appraising, not predatory. "Talent isn't your problem. Refusal is. You pull away at the moment you should close your hand."
"I don't want to disappear."
"You won't—if you anchor."
"To what?"
"Shadow," she said simply. "Edges. Seams. Silhouettes. Every thread you pull needs a pin in the dark. Light is the leash. Shadow is the path."
She snapped.
A black filament stitched the air down to the mat—thin as eyelash, taut as piano wire. It hummed like a fly trapped in glass.
"Thread," she said. "Initiate tool. Pull, shape, dismiss. The threads don't think. You do."
She released. The line held, vibrating with expectation.
"Your turn."
Asher breathed in. He didn't reach into nothing—he reached into shade. He found the corner where wall met floor, the seam under the paper door, the shadow his own body threw, and tugged.
Cold bit his palm. A filament answered.
"Pin it," Gia said.
He nailed the line to the floor's hair-thin seam where the sun missed. The thread thickened, black gleam going from idea to object his hand trusted.
"Again."
He dragged absence over his shoulders—a cloak that told light to blink and miss him. Not invisibility. Just… less.
"Again."
A hook snagged the lip of a table's shadow. A wire strung from pillar shade to his hand. A shard-edge that didn't reflect. A flat ring he set around his throat—sound dulled like the room swallowed its own breath.
"Name it," she said.
"Mute band."
"Again."
He stitched a short tether from palm to a pillar's dark side. Barely visible, but when he leaned, the pull held like a promise.
"Stitch-step," Gia said, almost pleased. "Half a pace on demand, along darkness you've already pinned. Not teleportation. You're not special."
He almost smiled. Didn't.
He reached for a blade next—truthful, not fancy. The spike in his grip shivered, then collapsed into ash that wasn't ash, more like shadow letting go.
"Why?" he snapped.
"Because you tried to lie." Her voice stayed quiet, merciless. "You told the Stone you were ready to kill for what you want. You aren't. Not yet."
The truth scraped. Part of him wanted to be. Part of him was glad he wasn't.
"Again," he said.
"Hold the thread."
He pulled a line from his palm to the pillar's umbra. It thrummed.
She flicked two fingers.
Gravity doubled.
The filament bucked like a live wire trying to whip free. Pain lit his knuckles. The line sawed at his grip.
"Anchor," Gia said, walking past like a lazy storm. "Cost always arrives."
He pinned the thread through the nearest shadow seam, then added more—door crack, stair lip, the knife-cut edge under the mat. The hum stabilized. His forearms burned.
"Control," she said. "Brute force fails. Leverage wins. Ease your grip a fraction. Let the line sing with you, not against you."
He eased. The buzz matched his pulse. It held.
The weight vanished. His hands shook. The ache felt honest.
"Law," she said at last. "Pain buys reach. Knowledge buys control. Isolation buys clarity. If you won't pay, you won't grow."
He nodded, breath raw.
They ran it until spots freckled his vision. Pull, pin, shape, dismiss. Each construct came faster, held longer. He started seeing the world in pins—the way light made seams and shadow made roads. He avoided anything that felt like a face.
When focus finally frayed, the dojo thinned at the edges.
"Enough," Gia said. "Another minute and you'll start taking more than you mean to."
"What changed?" he asked.
"You let me in," she said simply. "And Vetrax gave you leverage. You hate this House. You need what it gives. Good leverage always hurts."
He hesitated. "What are you? Really."
"The echo of what you'll become if you stop running from your own shape." Her head tilted. "Bring better questions next time."
"Like what?"
"Like who left this room unlocked," she said. "And why they want you trained."
White tore away.
Stone. Dust. Old lights humming. His wrists tingled. The mute band itched around a throat wearing nothing. The air held his shape a second too long and then forgot him.
He stared at the chalk and hated how much he wanted back in.
Footsteps.
He stepped out just as Cain rounded the corner with two polished Vetrax boys at his heels. Cain's smile had the shine of a blade no one had used yet.
"Redvale," Cain drawled, eyes flicking to the dust on Asher's cuffs. "Field trip to the remedial wing? In Vetrax, dogs learn to heel. Try not to bark when men are speaking."
Old Asher might have swung.
New Asher let the spike-idea sit quiet in his palm and didn't pull it. He slid past, shoulder brushing Cain's, and kept walking.
"Careful," Cain called, honey over glass. "Act like you belong long enough, someone might believe you."
Asher didn't turn.
He was already counting shadows—pillar edges, door seam, the cut of Cain's silhouette on the floor. Pins mapped. Roads drawn. If things went loud, he knew the path.
He made it three corridors.
Glass blew somewhere above, a clean, mean sound. A weight scythed past the clerestory and hit gravel outside with a bone-slap. Rain hissed through the high cut like the building exhaled.
Footsteps. Two sets. Close.
A wire kissed his throat and bit.
Cold fire. Nyxroot—training venom. He jammed his knuckles under the line before it sawed his voice out of him. An arm locked around his ribs and hauled. Another hand yanked tighter.
Anchor.
His palm snapped down. Thread to floor seam. A black line from skin to stone, humming.
Control.
He dumped his weight, let the tether steal it. Knees dropped. The line jerked both of them a half-step forward. The garrote loosened a finger-width—enough. He slid sideways, skin tearing, and drove the back of his head into teeth.
The man hissed. The wire scraped. Nyxroot lick ran down his jaw and into his tongue.
Cost.
Asher rolled, came up crooked. The second shape rushed in low with a short blade, edge silvered. Same venom glint. Cute. Asher flicked a hook across the doorway, caught the man's ankle mid-lunge, and yanked. Body met stone. Knife bounced under a cabinet of old helmets.
"Shhh," someone breathed behind him—wrong breath, too calm. A glove smeared chalk on his collar. Professional.
He dragged a cloak over his shoulders—the absence kind. The world blinked and lost him for half a second. He stitch-stepped off his tether and slid left, reappearing inside the attacker's reach. Elbow. Throat. The man folded, gasping, eyes fishing for him and catching nothing.
The first one didn't swear. He came tight with the wire again, no tells, no wasted motion.
Asher met him with a spike—not a sword, not a lie. Ugly, honest, palm-length black pulled from where his shadow cut under the pillar and nailed to the seam under the door. He shoved it through forearm meat. The man hissed, dropped the wire, flowed back like water.
Lights stuttered. The corridor listened.
Far end of the hall, the blond first-year with no emblem watched like a statue. Blink.
Gone.
Echoes again.
The second attacker scrabbled blind for his knife. Asher kicked it farther. He could press. He didn't. The numb creep from the garrote was flowering across his shoulder.
Anchor or you drown.
He stitched another half-step and pinned his back to a pillar. Breath in. Count. The spike shook in his hand, hungry for more truth than he owned. He let it crumble and opened both palms—empty again.
The two shapes regrouped without speaking. Assassins or idiots with discipline. They looked past him once—over his shoulder toward the long dark—then dove for the stairwell and vanished. No chase. Not with Nyxroot singing in his nerves.
Silence came back too fast. Like the building was ashamed of the noise.
"Asher."
Rainley's voice drifted from a doorway, soft as gauze. His green eyes flicked to the line of blood on Asher's neck, then down to the faint thread still humming against the floor.
"You should let the med ward tend to that."
"I'm fine."
Rainley's gaze held, unreadable. "Of course you are."
He was gone before Asher could answer.
A soft clap glided from the dark.
Morgan stood barefoot at the corner, holding a single black hair between two fingers like a violinist checking a string. Asher hadn't heard him arrive. He never did.
"Clean lines," Morgan said, voice almost pleased. He tucked the hair into his pocket like a keepsake and moved past, bed-linen perfect against his knuckles.
Gooseflesh prickled Asher's arms. He pressed fingers to the cut at his throat. Blood. Rain. The hot-cold sting of training venom.
Who had send the two assassins to kill him?
He breathed, slow. The comm on his wrist chimed with a useless campus announcement about lunch hours and curfew.
He walked.
And the shadows walked with him.