The sky over the outpost city of Harrow Vale hung like stained parchment, thick with soot and low clouds. A perpetual haze choked the rooftops and spilled through the narrow alleys like smoke from a fire that never burned out. Even the rain here felt different—oily, acidic, leaving pale streaks on cloaks and the back of your throat.
Izen pulled his hood lower as the wagon clattered across broken cobblestone. The leather band around his wrist itched, a subtle mark of his new rank. There was no emblem, no title, no ceremony. Just the band, and the knowledge that his name was now on a list of tools to be used.
This was not a mission. It was a test masquerading as one.
That's what Instructor Cael had whispered before handing him the sealed envelope.
"Observe. Evaluate. Eliminate. Fail quietly."
The wagon driver said nothing during the journey. His eyes were pale and unfocused, like someone who had learned never to ask questions. Beside Izen sat another Knife-ranked trainee, a boy named Arik. Broad shoulders, strong jaw, twitchy fingers. Arik wasn't a thinker. He was a brawler, proud of it. The kind who sharpened his knives obsessively but dulled his senses in every other way.
They hadn't spoken. They wouldn't. That was by design.
The Academy didn't train friends. It trained silences.
Their objective lay in one of Harrow Vale's poorer districts—a place called Miregut. The name suited it. Wooden shanties leaned against crumbling brick. Water pooled in the roads, sickly green and clotted with garbage. Rats scattered at the sound of boots. People didn't make eye contact. Children watched from rooftops with empty stares, like ghosts waiting to be remembered.
Izen kept his stride measured, his eyes low, but every detail etched itself into him.
The way the smoke clung to the stonework. The symbols scratched into alley walls, forming a silent code. The way a young woman in a veil passed three times on the same street, always holding the same basket, never looking inside.
It was a message.
The city was watching.
They reached the rendezvous point by midday. A crumbling apothecary tucked between two collapsed tenements. Inside, the smell of damp herbs and spoiled lye clung to the air. Shelves lined with dust-covered bottles leaned like drunkards.
A man waited behind the counter. Skin like bark, teeth like old coins. No name, no greeting.
He handed them a small package, wrapped in brown waxed cloth.
Inside was a folded map. A drawing of a building—a bathhouse near the city's core. One room was circled in red.
Beneath the drawing, only three words were written:
"She wears blue."
They left without speaking.
Arik grunted once, flicked his fingers, and disappeared into the side alleys to begin scouting. Izen stayed behind a moment longer, eyes lingering on the parchment.
There was something wrong with the drawing.
The red circle was precise—too precise. And the ink had dried in layers. Someone had redrawn the same circle more than once, as if trying to convince themselves of the target.
Or as if it wasn't just a room.
It was a warning.
Izen moved through Harrow Vale like a shadow made of smoke. Not fast. Not obvious. He stopped to buy a chipped apple from a fruit cart. He helped a hunched man gather spilled firewood. Every action was deliberate. Forgettable.
He reached the bathhouse as the sun began to sink behind the stone wall of smog. It loomed like a relic of a better age—arched columns, painted roof tiles, steam rising from open vents in its foundation.
Inside, the floors were worn marble, cracked and moss-slick. Incense burned in shallow bowls. Attendants wore dark robes and moved like puppets in a ritual play, heads always bowed.
A woman in blue sat in the red-circled room.
She was older than expected. Perhaps forty. Wrapped in sapphire silk, hair pinned in gold, eyes sharper than any knife in Izen's belt. She didn't belong here—not in this city, not in this world. Her presence was a needle in a field of mud.
He didn't need to speak to know she wasn't the true target.
She was bait.
And someone wanted them to bite.
That night, he returned to the apothecary.
The bark-skinned man was gone. In his place, a note, pinned to the counter with a rusted scalpel:
"Don't follow orders you don't understand."
Below it, a smear of blood. Fresh.
Izen read the note twice. Once with his eyes. Once with his instincts.
This wasn't a test of execution.
It was a test of discernment.
He found Arik near the bathhouse, crouched behind a butcher stall, sharpening a blade with quiet precision.
"She's alone," Arik said. "No guards. Looks like a noble. Should be easy."
Izen didn't answer. He watched Arik for a long time. Long enough to notice the way the boy's breathing changed when he talked about killing. Faster. Hungrier. Like it was the only thing that made him feel real.
"You'll draw the blood," Izen said softly. "I'll be the shadow."
Arik nodded and smiled.
But Izen was already planning how to stop him.
The next evening, they returned.
The bathhouse was quieter. Fewer attendants. More shadows.
Arik crept along the outer corridor, one hand on his blade.
Izen walked the roof.
Not because it offered better view—but because it gave him time to think. To feel. The stone beneath his boots was warm from the steam below. The wind carried ash and rust. Somewhere in the distance, bells tolled, out of sync with the hour.
They were five minutes too early.
Five minutes that didn't belong.
He stopped.
His pulse slowed.
Everything around him felt... paused.
Not in reality. But in the air. In the moment.
Something waited here.
Something wanted this to happen.
Arik entered the chamber.
The woman in blue stood calmly by the bath, her hands behind her back. She turned when he stepped in, eyes narrowing, no fear showing.
Izen dropped from the roof through the open ceiling vent.
He landed without a sound.
The woman saw him. But she didn't speak.
And then Arik struck.
Izen moved before the blade met flesh.
Not quickly.
Just... before.
He couldn't explain it—not even to himself. His limbs didn't feel faster. But his instincts screamed like they'd seen the outcome already.
He tackled Arik mid-swing. The knife sailed past the woman's face and scraped against stone.
Arik growled and tried to twist free, but Izen drove an elbow into his throat, then his ribs. A sharp crack. Breath left him in a wheeze.
The woman didn't flinch.
She stepped back into the shadows and disappeared.
"I had her!" Arik spat, voice hoarse. "What the hell is wrong with you?!"
"She was a decoy," Izen said calmly. "You would've failed. We both would've died."
Arik lunged.
Izen didn't move.
Because he didn't need to.
The footfalls behind Arik came fast.
And then—
Steel flashed.
A cloaked figure drove a blade clean through Arik's spine.
He dropped without a sound.
The figure knelt beside Izen.
No mask.
Only eyes like stone.
"Initiate," the figure said, "you've passed."
They left the bathhouse through a hidden tunnel beneath the pool. The cloaked man walked ahead without speaking. Izen followed.
The tunnel was narrow and old, lined with bricks that wept moisture. Cracks in the ceiling glowed faintly with alchemical moss.
After nearly an hour of walking, they emerged into a stone chamber beneath the city's western aqueduct. Torches lit the walls. Maps and scrolls lined the shelves.
Izen knew without being told: this was not part of the Academy's main campus.
It was something else.
A deeper current.
"You were never meant to kill her," the man said. "This mission was constructed to test your ability to see beneath lies."
"And Arik?"
"Failed. And made himself a liability."
The man turned and placed a coin into Izen's hand. Silver. Marked with a spiral and three slashes.
"You've been marked for the next tier," he said. "If you speak of this to anyone outside this chamber, your tongue will be cut out and your body thrown to the river."
Izen stared at the coin.
It felt heavier than silver.
He closed his fist.
That night, in the cramped lodging above a shuttered bakery, Izen sat by a rusted window and watched the fog roll over Harrow Vale's roofs. It poured like silk between chimneys and towers, clinging to the bones of the city like it had never left.
His hand trembled slightly.
Not from fear.
From... something else.
When he closed his eyes, he could feel the moment replaying in his body—the way he'd moved before Arik attacked. Like time had bent for a breath. Like he'd stepped sideways, not forward.
He took a breath.
Held it.
And for just a moment, the world went quiet.
No wind.
No breathing.
No sound.
Then it snapped back into place.
He opened his eyes.
The rusted clock on the windowsill ticked forward—one beat too late.