Cain didn't look up from his watch communicator. He watched his own fight on replay, thumb tapping pause at the moment the blade stopped a hair from a throat. He didn't smile. The tilt of his head did it for him. Efficient. Clinical. Guilty as charged.
Asher rolled his shoulder on the edge of his bunk and found the old ache there, the one that never left since the Hive. The katana sat like a weight in his chest core, not metal but will. No rack. No polish. When the ring called, the blade came to his hand like breath. Naturally. Today was going to be a long day.
"Lunch," someone called from the hall—the end of morning classes, everyone shuffling toward the mess hall, as if they weren't already marching.
Asher blinked. Twice. The day tasted like stale buns and boiled greens, the Empire's idea of fuel. He'd traded a protein bar for ration cocoa and regretted it when the powder clumped. Wiry. Really? They could build walls that ate sunlight but not a whisk.
Asher stayed standing at the end of the table because sitting would have been worse. Trays clattered. Steam from boiled greens fogged his face. The cloak stuck to his back and the collar rubbed raw like all collars here—stiff enough to stand on their own. Locking buckles clicked when he moved. Empire issue. Empire comfort. That won't do.
The summons dropped into every communicator at once. Duel list. After lunch. Cain's name on top. Asher's in a clean, quiet line under it.
He felt nothing at first. Then the slow, sour roll of a thought he hated. I'm not ready.
The ring was loud stone under soft boots. Sweat already stained the air. Initiates packed the steps the way sand packed a trench. Somebody started a chant and choked it off when Warden Durn walked in.
Warden Durn took his mark without looking at any of them. He didn't need to raise his voice. The ring listened anyway.
Nyxroot kits hissed open along the rack. Thin silver pooled and caught light on every training edge.
"Weapons."
Cain set his blade on his palm like an offering and studied the faint silver sheen that ran the edge. Nyxroot. It caught light the way oil caught fire. He rolled his wrist and the poison smiled back at him.
Across the line, Asher breathed out through his nose. The katana came up through his hand, a small scatter of shadow threads around the hilt, spine buzzing where it anchored inside him. The steel felt cooler than he expected. Good. Maybe he could draw a quick win. Surprise attack. Asher wasn't against the idea of playing dirty. If it meant winning.
Durn palmed a small case, snapped it open, and set three Standard Shards on a stool behind him. They glinted with that quiet hunger Shards always wore.
"Winner of this mini tournament takes these," Durn said. "Loser gets pain."
No one laughed.
Durn turned to Cain. "Pick your opponent. You're the reigning champion."
Cain didn't look around. He didn't need to. His chin tipped a fraction toward Asher.
"Duel one," Durn said. "Cain versus Asher."
Internally Asher sighed. "Damn, damn, damn it!"
Cain opened with neat footwork, no wasted motion. A small flare at the heel. A cut to test timing. Then a feint that stacked three bad choices on Asher at once.
Asher took the least bad and paid for it in sparks. Steel rang high. The ring turned that sound into memories he didn't want. Screams. Bone in sand. No. Focus.
One, two, three exchanges. Cain let distance breathe, then stole it again. Everything he did was a perfect rhythm. No chance for any surprise counters.
Asher pushed anyway. He worked under the edge, tested wrists, met angles. Clean mechanics. No heroics. He lasted longer than he had any right to. He heard it in the way the crowd's noise filed down. Naturally.
A tiny flicker crossed Cain's eyes. Surprise, or the ghost of it. Then gone.
The rhythm changed.
Cain stepped in with his whole body. Precision broke open into speed. Centerline taps kept Asher off balance—just enough to make a bad habit feel smart. When Asher slid left, Cain was already there. When Asher cut low, Cain's guard bit down like a trap.
The Nyxroot sheen moved. Asher tracked it even when he wasn't looking. Keep the edge off skin. Keep the edge off skin.
The other thought pulled at him from somewhere he didn't want to name. Gia's training pressed in without words. He wasn't fighting Cain. He was fighting the piece of himself that wanted Cain's control.
He hated that one more.
A hook to the guard. A half-step pivot. Cain made the ring smaller with his feet. Asher's arm started to drag. Breath went thin. He needed a shift. Any shift.
He faked a stumble he didn't fully control, dropped his weight, and cut for the left knee. Clean mechanics. Commit. Trust the line.
Cain's blade was already answering.
Steel rang. Nyxroot kissed Asher's forearm. It wasn't a deep cut. It didn't have to be. Fire crawled under skin like ants with knives. His fingers went numb. The katana slid away.
Durn said one word. "Enough."
The ring obeyed.
Cain lowered his blade. He didn't celebrate. He didn't have to. He wiped the edge with a cloth and the venom left a dark thread on white. He folded the cloth once, twice, tucked it away.
Asher flexed his hand and felt nothing. He stared at the narrow line the poison had traced. The hole it hollowed in his arm looked small. The lesson it left did not.
"Out," Durn said.
A chant started and died on its own, embarrassed to be heard.
The hospital wing smelled like wet wool, old sweat, cheap soap. Windows were shut because the Empire liked rooms to keep their own air. An exhausted healer with bags under her eyes pressed her fingers above the cut. Heat rolled slow.
"Welcome back," she sighed. "Again."
Her needle found a vein. His blood came dark where the Nyxroot still sulked. She watched it run, eyes on the line the way Cain had watched his edge. People in this place liked lines.
"It burns," Asher said before he could stop himself.
"It should," she said. No pity in it. Just fact. She pressed her palm to the cut and heat gathered; skin knit in seconds. The fire dropped to a dull scrape—the worst of it gone—leaving only the Nyxroot that her pull hadn't caught sitting circulating in his circulatory system. She taped a band that would itch later and moved on without waiting for thanks.
He flexed again. Pins returned. Needles. Then fingers. He stared at the thread-thin scar and thought about thin things that held weight. He didn't like that either.
The Stone shifted against his thoughts. Not mercy. Not hunger. Attention. Parasite or partner. He didn't ask which.
Somewhere else, inside stone older than the ring, the Arbiter sat without seeming to occupy space. The air grew cold and motionless around him as if to avoid his ire. He let the quiet do the work.
Juno stood across from that quiet with his jaw set. Broad-shouldered. He watched the floor one heartbeat too long, then looked up.
"The boy who lost," the Arbiter said in a voice that never needed to be loud. "He will help you find the spy."
He didn't demand. He promised consequences.
"You want your revenge good," the Arbiter added. "Deliver. Or I will not hold up my end."
Juno's mouth twitched like a man tasting bitter iron. He gave one short nod. He didn't ask questions. The Arbiter didn't answer them anyway.
The silence grew teeth. Juno left before it bit.
Night laid the academy under a thin skin of cold. Lanterns made puddles where boys' voices went to die. The halls held whispers the way cloth held scent.
Asher pulled his cloak up to his ears and hated the scratch. He walked beside Raven and counted anchors against the wrongness that woke at night. Doorframe. Drip. Draft. He let the edge of his vision blur, where shadow-threads lived. Not lines. Not light. Intent crossing itself. Watch. Don't tug. Tugging made knots.
At the outer gate, Raven adjusted the strap on the satchel she pretended not to need. "A friend will be waiting," she said.
He didn't ask who. He didn't ask why. They'd already tried once to enter Warden Alden Marrow's Archive and failed.
They rounded the corridor and found Tiffany Young already there—the mousy-haired girl from their trial, the one who had asked if anyone ever died. She didn't belong to doorways or faces—just edges. Pale, half-smile that never learned how to finish itself. She nodded like the corridor greeted her first.
"Late," she said. Not reproach. A measurement.
"Damn," Ryvak puffed as he jogged up, hair wet from dunking his head in a fountain. "Nobody warned me we were sprinting into a dungeon."
"Walk quiet," Raven said.
Juno stepped out of the dark and the corridor made room for him. He didn't raise his shoulders or his voice. He didn't have to.
"I have a job to do."
They flinched. Raven didn't. She only angled toward him, already braced, like she'd expected him.
Naturally, Asher thought. Not a seer. Just quicker at the math than the rest of us.
"What job?" Asher asked, trying for casual and landing on tired.
Juno's look wasn't a threat. It was math. "We walk," he said. "Then I tell you what matters."
Ryvak shifted, not hiding it. "We letting him in now?"
"What is this job?" Asher asked, voice flat.
Juno said nothing. He didn't need to.
"It's fine," Raven said, low. "We need him."
Tiffany watched her like she wanted a reason. Ryvak looked between them. They all looked at Raven. She held it.
"Okay," Asher said. "Let's go."
They moved like a unit that didn't trust itself, no one wanting rear until Juno took it because he knew he should. The academy changed skin as they cut left into darker stone. Plaster to old rock. Old rock to something that drank sound.
Tiffany smelled the air once and turned right at the wall that buckled where the Empire had patched it and the patch had lost the argument. "Keep close."
"Cheap oil again," Asher muttered as the lantern smoke found his throat. The Empire never bought the good stuff for corridors it didn't want you in. Naturally.
He kept his left hand near the cold wall and let his right rest free. He counted the small things because the big ones landed without warning. Drip. Step. His heart. The threads.
They stopped before a peeling mural that had started life as a god with a spear and ended as flaked paint around an idea. A serpent had survived where the rest died. It coiled the old spear haft like it wanted time to apologize.
Raven's chin dipped. "Same as last time," she said, voice almost a breath.
Asher felt the curve scratch at a memory: a quick carve near Nyxroot storage, a smug serpent cut into tile at elbow height, a map built out of jokes only spies laughed at. Thread pins in a wall only he could read.
"What the hell is this?" Ryvak asked.
Asher hadn't heard him arrive. Typical. He had a talent for showing up where he could trouble things without taking blame.
"A pattern," Asher said, because the word saved him explaining. Naturally.
Juno gave the mural one look long enough to remember it precisely. "Move," he said, not unkind. "We're burning time."
The hall tightened to single file. Cold came up through the stone into knees. Someone had drawn five short lines and a long one scoring through, then tried to smear it away. The wall still remembered.
"Stop," Raven said.
The corridor ended at a black door that ate lantern glow. The seam was too precise to be honest. The thing behind it waited like a held breath.
"Same door," Raven said.
"Key time," Tiffany added, soft. She produced a slim key from somewhere Asher couldn't imagine and put it to paint where no hole showed.
"Hold," Asher said without meaning to. He let his sight blur and watched threads along the jamb. Not string. Choices worn into stone. Knots where promises had caught. He tried not to touch them with his mind. Touching pulled.
Tiffany eased the key forward and paused halfway, like a person touching someone else's pulse.
"Ready?" she asked.
"No," Asher said. "Do it."
The click belonged to a guilty door. Something inside settled like a lung deciding to breathe again. Pressure went thin, then thick, the way a dorm room felt wrong when you did your counting late.
Juno tilted his head. Listening. Weather only he heard.
Tiffany kept the key steady for a beat and turned the rest. Gears rolled tiredly. The seam cracked by a finger, then a hand.
Cold came out first. Not temperature. Choice. It curled around their ankles and asked what sort of people they were.
The serpent's eye in the mural found a light where none should be and made it.
Asher set his palm on the wood and felt grain flex under paint. Not much. Enough to say awake. He should have pulled away. He didn't.
"Stay close," Tiffany said.
"What are we walking into?" Ryvak whispered.
"A room that pretends to be a problem," Raven said. "It's both."
They stepped through. Light misbehaved. It slid off surfaces it liked and stuck to the ones that lied. The air tasted like stone that had held secrets too long.
Asher counted anchors again. Doorframe. Drip. Draft. Thread. The last one didn't count and counted anyway.
Behind them, the seam widened another fraction without anyone pushing. The pressure shifted.
Juno leaned to see around the first turn and stopped. "Hoods," he said.
Three black shapes stood against the far wall the way bad ideas stood at the back of classrooms. Not people. Robes hung on nothing. The shadow inside them moved independent of light.
"Damn," Asher said under his breath. He didn't mean to. He meant to be brave.
"Not guardians," Tiffany said. "Markers."
"Markers for what?" Ryvak asked.
"For someone's humor," she said, and she was either lying or telling the truth about the wrong thing.
They passed with the kind of care you gave sleeping animals whose names you didn't know. The corridor angled down. Stone sweated cold. Threads ran thicker along the walls, braided with older intent. He felt their pull not on his hand but on time. The Void made bad knots there. He knew the taste. He hated that he knew.
"Feel that?" Raven asked.
"Yes," Asher said.
"No," Ryvak added, because quiet never fit him.
"Pick up your feet," Juno called from the dark ahead. "Don't drag. No touching walls."
"I wasn't," Ryvak said.
"Cut the crap," Raven said without turning.
Asher's attention snagged on a hairline crack full of dust. The dust ran true down the wall, then left at a right angle. Someone had pulled a thread too hard and broken it. He swallowed. His mouth tasted like old coins.
"What is this place?" he asked.
"Storage," Tiffany said, almost cheerful. "Memories. Mistakes. Things we owe."
She stopped at a second door that looked exactly like the first except for the fact it knew them. Asher didn't want to know how he knew that. He knew it anyway.
Tiffany found an invisible seam with her thumb and pushed the key into paint. The paint swallowed metal without a smear. The door shivered.
"Hold," Asher said again, softer. He watched the jamb's knots loosen and tighten, little denials relaxing as something inside decided they were the problem it had waited for.
He felt the Stone answer a question the room hadn't asked aloud. He didn't like the answer. He didn't have a better one.
The door edged wider.
He stepped through first because he hated not knowing more than he hated pain. The room opened, a long rectangle full of tables that pretended to be pews. Glass sat in neat rows on the left, thin panes etched with glyphs so shallow you had to tilt your head to see. The academy put its glass in labs. It put it here too. Naturally.
On the right, a wall of symbols and pins and ash-colored thread. Not actually string. Someone had made a map with thread and lies. The wall's threads answered the quiet ones only he could see. Echoes.
Raven took a step toward the pins and stopped herself because she liked keeping fingers. Tiffany didn't move at all. Ryvak wandered toward a shiny corner and Juno caught his sleeve before the boy could make art out of a mistake.
"Unhand me or I break your arm," Ryvak said, more habit than heat.
"You won't," Juno said, letting go anyway. Power without show.
Asher moved close enough to read without reading. Pins traced routes through vaults, stock rooms, stairwells that pretended to dead-end. A serpent shape cut the middle. Echo upon echo.
"Spy paths," Raven said.
"Training," Tiffany said. "If I were teaching children to be problems, this is how I'd do it."
"Guilty as charged," Asher said before his filter woke.
Raven's glance slid over him like a knife wrapped in cloth. He took it and pretended he didn't.
He followed one route with his eyes from here to Nyxroot storage. It ran clean. It doubled back. It used a patched wall that had lost its argument. It ran through a mural that made gods look like jokes. He stepped back. He didn't trust himself around things that told truths.
Dust near the door told another story. The straight line ran through a bare square that shouldn't be bare. Something had been taken off this wall last. Not a pin. A key.
Asher turned to Tiffany. She watched him patiently, as if waiting for him to say the part he would like least.
"Who else has your key?" he asked.
"No one," she said.
He waited.
"You are welcome," she added.
He didn't reward it.
"Time," Juno said.
They moved deeper. The next door wasn't paint-swallow. Wood cross-banded with metal that had decided to rust for show. Asher set his palm to it and the grain flexed. Awake. Impatient.
Tiffany didn't need a key. She knelt and slid her fingers under a band where it met the frame. The sound when it moved wasn't metal on metal. Breath through teeth.
Cold wrapped their ankles first. The room beyond felt wrong before it looked like anything. Asher disliked places that asked him to enter blind.
A plinth waited under a box that wasn't a box. The lid wore a plain sigil he didn't know. He hated not knowing. He didn't touch.
On the far wall, a slab of obsidian like a mirror for ghosts. Scratch marks in neat columns cut across its face. Not letters. Blow counts. A stubborn log written in pain.
"Ninety," Raven said, fingers hovering a width from touching. "They stopped at ninety."
"What if ninety was enough?" Asher asked.
Juno's eyes were on the ceiling. Asher followed and saw why. Threads up there braided wrong—a net that had learned the knot from a liar. It waited anyway.
"Fast," Juno said. "Not loud."
They did what they came for without saying it. The Arbiter liked obedience in spirit. Raven found a small folded scrap tucked into the slab's lip, a symbol on it like a serpent swallowing a key. She didn't open it. She didn't pocket it. She palmed it in a way that left her hand empty if asked.
They left the room made of stubborn and history and secrets that cost blood. Back in the corridor, the cold reconsidered them and withdrew to watch.
Asher set his palm to the first door while Tiffany worked the key one last time. He didn't tug the threads.
He should have.
They stepped out to the mural and the serpent watched without moving. The corridor tasted like cheap oil again. He coughed. It sounded like a guilty boy in a quiet room.
Juno let the others go two steps ahead, then fell into stride beside Asher like a man opening an unpleasant letter.
"A message from the Arbiter," he said, low. "I know everything that goes on in this academy. You will help him find the spy."
The words sat between them like a deal already signed. Binding. Ugly. Real.
Asher's skin prickled. "So you are his lapdog?"
"No." said Juno not happy with Asher's comment. "I need help with personal problem, the Arbiter is the most powerful. He will help me."
They reached the last turn before the outer gate. Night pushed a colder breath across their faces like a reminder that weather didn't care.
Asher touched stone near the frame because habit beat fear by an inch. The grain flexed under paint. Awake. Listening.
A small motion brushed his vision left. He froze.
Along the edge of the doorway, where black paint met the part that remembered light, one shadow-thread twitched. Slow. Careful. Like the door had just remembered to breathe.
He didn't look away.
If the door was breathing, who was on the other side?