The forest in the southern valley didn't appear on any official maps. That was by design.
It sprawled out like a scar between two forgotten provinces, choked with ash trees and thick-veined underbrush. Few dared to walk its trails anymore — not because of beasts or bandits, but because of something older. Something that smelled like memory and rot.
Izen walked alone.
His boots left no tracks.
He had risen at dawn, packed little: dried root, a skin of water, a bundle of cloth, the knife. The letter was folded carefully in his coat's inner pocket. He didn't reread it.
"When he stops dreaming."
He hadn't dreamed at all last night. Just darkness. A kind of blankness that felt more like… stalling.
Like the world was holding its breath.
The knife on his belt wasn't meant for combat. It was too thin, too short. A letter knife. Blackwood handle, silver inlay in the shape of a broken ring.
His mother had said nothing about it before she died.
Only after — in memory, in fragments — did he start to wonder how long she'd known.
Izen had heard stories about the Academy.
Everyone had. Whispers. Half-truths. It wasn't a school, not really. It had no name, no crest, no graduates. It existed outside the normal factions of the realm — the Towered Guilds, the City Courts, the Obsidian Cloisters. It did not answer to them. It did not need to.
The Academy trained one kind of student.
Killers.
Not the crude kind that spilled blood for coin — there were thousands of those. No, the Academy's students were different.
They were erasers.
Wraiths.
Instruments of unseen wars.
The kind of people who made kings disappear in the middle of a sentence.
It was nearly midday when he found the tree.
It rose from a hollow in the forest floor, gnarled and black, as if burned from the inside out. No leaves. No birds. Just silence. Its roots clutched a boulder split down the middle, and a faint symbol had been etched into the stone: the same broken ring.
The same mark as the knife.
Izen approached and sat beneath it.
He said nothing. Just waited.
The world breathed around him.
An hour passed. Maybe more. He traced the grooves in the tree bark with his fingers. Old runes — the kind his mother never let him read. Sigils meant to contain things.
Not protect. Contain.
And then… someone stepped into the clearing.
He appeared soundlessly. A boy, maybe Izen's age. Fifteen? Sixteen? Pale skin, sharp jaw, black hair tied back with twine. He wore a dark coat — thinner than it should've been for the season — and a narrow blade hung at his hip. Not ornamented. Just sharp.
He looked at Izen like he was already disappointed.
"You're late," the boy said.
Izen didn't respond.
"You were supposed to come three days ago."
"I didn't want to."
The boy blinked. Then he smiled.
"That's the right answer."
He crossed the clearing and offered a hand. Izen didn't take it.
The boy shrugged. "Deros. That's not my birth name. That gets taken later."
"Izen," he said quietly.
Deros nodded. "You'll want to hold onto that, too. Names are like teeth. They fall out if you're not careful."
They walked together through the forest, moving west. Deros knew the way well.
"You're a Blooded," Deros said, as casually as commenting on the weather.
Izen glanced at him. "What does that mean?"
"Means one of your parents was marked. Chosen. Cursed. Depends on who you ask." He grinned. "But it also means you don't get to leave. Not really."
"I didn't ask to come."
"No one does."
As they walked, Deros pointed out strange things among the trees — rusted chains growing from bark, carved stones half-sunk in mud, a place where the wind blew backward.
"The forest is old," he explained. "Older than any throne or treaty. This is where the first Marks were written. The first Veilborn died here."
"Veilborn?"
"You'll learn soon enough."
Eventually, the trees broke into a shallow ravine. Across the ridge, built into the face of the cliff, the Academy revealed itself.
It looked less like a school and more like a fortress that had decayed in reverse — stonework too precise to be recent, yet somehow more intact than ruins should be. A dozen slate rooftops jutted like knives from the earth. Windows shuttered. Bridges spanning dead air. Some doors were half-submerged in stone, like they'd been swallowed over time.
It did not look welcoming.
Which meant he was in the right place.
"The Academy isn't part of the Kingdom," Deros said as they descended a narrow switchback path. "Or any kingdom. It trains for the Silence."
"The Silence?"
Deros just smiled.
Inside, the hallways were narrow and lightless.
Stone walls carved with names — not full names, just fragments. Half-letters. Vanished voices.
Izen paused before one: ISE— scratched deep and unfinished.
Deros watched him. "Sometimes they die before the last letter."
They reached a small dormitory — two cots, a desk, an empty wardrobe.
"This is yours. For now," Deros said. "They move us when the first Lessons start."
"When is that?"
"They don't tell us. Just… come for you."
He sat on his cot, peeling off his boots. His toes were blistered.
"How long have you been here?" Izen asked.
"Long enough to stop wondering when I'll leave."
That night, Izen tried to sleep.
The walls were too quiet. The dark was too dark — like it was watching him.
He closed his eyes.
And dreamed.
In the dream, the cellar returned.
The stairs were longer now. Endless. The air thinner. He descended step after step, until the bottom opened into a space that didn't belong to the house at all.
Stone pillars. Blood-soaked sand. A reflection that didn't match his movement.
And his mother — waiting.
Not afraid. Not angry.
Just… resigned.
"You remember now, don't you?"
He tried to speak. Couldn't.
She stepped closer. Touched his chest.
"They didn't curse you, Izen. I did."
The mirror shattered.
He woke with blood in his mouth.