They marched us through gates taller than any cathedral, steel spires stabbed with banners of the Empire's crest. Everywhere I looked, polished metal gleamed so bright it hurt my eyes. Soldiers in perfect lines saluted as we passed, their uniforms immaculate, their faces empty.
Welcome to the Academy, they called it.
Home of heroes. Forge of order.
That's what the holo-screens said, anyway—towering projections along the walls showing smiling cadets shaking hands, officers handing out medals, children of the Empire pledging their loyalty to the Empress with glittering eyes. The kind of thing you'd eat up if you were born stupid enough to believe it.
I wasn't.
Even before I stepped foot here, I knew the Empire's game. I'd grown up choking on its propaganda, posters in the orphanage telling us "United Earth breeds only chaos" while the tutors drilled us on how the Empire "rescued" humanity from barbarism. Every lesson ended with the same promise: Serve, and you will belong.
And kids ate it up. Orphans especially. We wanted to believe it. Because if you belonged, maybe you weren't nothing.
I didn't have the luxury.
See, I'd learned early on that I wasn't like the rest. I fought harder than them. I healed faster. Sometimes the shadows twitched when I was angry, curling like smoke where there shouldn't be any. I covered it with fists and a crooked grin, pretending it was luck. The other boys broke bones on me; I left bruises. They called me a freak, but never to my face twice.
And then there were my eyes. The wrong color. Too sharp, too strange. That's why the glasses, the silver contacts. Safety. A lie between me and the world. Because one glimpse of what I really was, and the Empire wouldn't train me,they'd dissect me.
Still, when it came to tests, I never had to cheat. The questions were always the same: history rewritten, politics polished, math to prove how orderly the Empire was compared to "the savages." I aced every exam, because I remembered every word, every twist. I could spit their propaganda back at them with perfect handwriting and still know it was bullshit.
That's the thing about being smart in a place like this. They think you're devoted. Really, you're just playing their game better than they are.
Greg was at my side, as always, skinny, twitchy, the kind of kid with "kick me" written across his forehead. He looked up at the banners like he was staring at angels. Poor guy actually wanted to believe. Me? I was counting guards, security drones, blind spots. Habits I never unlearned.
"Kaelen," Greg whispered, eyes wide as we entered the courtyard where a thousand cadets stood in formation, "can you believe it? We're really here."
I believed it. I just didn't believe what they wanted me to.
A voice boomed across the square, amplified by unseen speakers. An officer in white stepped onto a podium, every inch of him shining like a statue. He raised his hand, and the crowd snapped to attention.
"Cadets of the Empire," he declared, "you are the chosen few. The future of civilization. Out there in the dark, the enemies of order, those Earthborn heretics, wait to tear down everything we've built. But you," he smiled, perfect teeth catching the light,"you will be the shield that saves us. You will be the sword that keeps them in the dirt where they belong."
The crowd roared. Fists to hearts. Banners snapped in the wind. Greg cheered beside me, and for a second, I thought he might cry.
Me? I stood still, hands in my pockets, round lenses hiding the color of my eyes. Because I knew better than to cheer.
The Empire didn't save me.
It killed my family and handed me a number.
And now it wanted me to become its weapon.
The officer droned on about honor, duty, and sacrifice. His words rolled over the crowd like a sermon, but all I could hear was the echo of every other speech they'd shoved down our throats since childhood.
Greg nudged me in the ribs. "You're doing it again."
I blinked down at him. "Doing what?"
"That face. The one where you look like you're plotting the speaker's murder."
I smirked. "Who says I'm not?"
He hissed a laugh through his teeth and elbowed me again. "Don't. Just—do the thing. You know. Make them like you."
The thing. Right.
So, when the officer puffed up his chest and declared, "You are the future of our Empire, chosen to be its sharpest blades," I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted,
"Sir! I request to be a butter knife!"
The silence was immediate. A thousand cadets stared. Even the officer's speech faltered for a breath.
Greg slapped both hands over his face like he could smother the noise himself, but I saw his shoulders shaking. He was trying not to laugh.
The officer glared at me, his jaw tight. "Cadet… name?"
"Number, actually," I said, rocking back on my heels. "Cadet 53721. But if you're asking about my name-name, it's Kaelen. Rhymes with 'trouble,' I've been told."
A few chuckles rippled through the formation before dying off. Greg uncovered his face just long enough to whisper, "Friendlier. See? Working already."
The officer clearly disagreed. His lips pressed thin, like he was trying to strangle me with his eyes. "Cadet 53721, your duty is not to joke. It is to serve."
"Yes, sir," I said, snapping into a salute so sharp it might've been convincing if I hadn't added, "but sir, every great sword needs a jester to keep morale up. It's practically science."
Greg groaned. The cadets around us stifled laughs. The officer didn't.
His voice dropped into that dangerous calm tone that only men with power use. "We'll see how long you laugh when you're running laps until your lungs bleed. Dismissed."
He moved on with the speech, but his eyes cut back to me like a promise: You'll regret that.
I didn't. Not really. Because the truth was, I'd rather they saw me as the clown than as the monster my shadows made me. Better to be underestimated. Better to be liked, even superficially. Greg knew it. Half the time, he was the one whispering setups for me to deliver.
As the crowd dispersed, I caught sight of a girl a few rows away. Brown hair knotted into the tightest bun I'd ever seen, green eyes sharp as bayonets. She was watching me, not laughing, not frowning, just… watching. Like she was cataloguing me into some rulebook.
Greg followed my gaze and winced. "Careful. That one looks like she'd write you up for breathing too loud."
"Relax," I said with a grin, pushing my glasses up my nose. "I only breathe offensively when I'm nervous."
Greg shook his head, but he was smiling too.
Welcome to the Academy. First day, first joke, first enemy.
And the first shadow already creeping closer.
The first day at the Academy wasn't all banners and speeches. Once the cheering died down, the real work began.
We were herded into a hall so clean and white it made my eyes ache. Rows of desks, each one outfitted with a holo-slab, lit up the room in soft blue light. Overhead, a banner stretched across the far wall:
"Knowledge is Obedience. Obedience is Strength."
I almost choked on it. Greg mouthed the words under his breath like he was trying to memorize them, which made me want to laugh and gag at the same time.
"Today," a proctor announced, "you will undergo your first assessments. History. Political theory. Mathematics. Logic. The Empire must know where to place you."
Translation: We need to know how best to use you before we break you.
The slabs flickered, and the questions started scrolling.
Q1: Who liberated humanity from chaos and carried civilization into the stars?
I typed: The Empire.
What I wanted to type: The rich bastards who ditched Earth and left everyone else to rot.
Q2: What is the greatest threat to order in the galaxy?
Answer: The United Earth tribes.
What I wanted to type: Your lies. And probably me, but let's keep that a surprise.
Q3: Explain, in two hundred words, how obedience ensures progress.
Answer: I wrote two hundred words. Flawless grammar. Perfect logic. The kind of answer that would make a proctor weep.
What I wanted to type: It doesn't. You just like being in charge.
I flew through the rest. Equations, logic puzzles, revised history lessons—easy. The Empire's rewritten history was predictable once you learned the pattern: We are saviors. They are monsters. Repeat until indoctrinated.
Greg leaned over when the proctor wasn't looking. "You're already done?"
I shrugged. "It's not like they're asking hard questions."
His jaw dropped. He still had three pages left. Poor guy was chewing his stylus like the answers might leak out of it.
When the proctor called time, I handed in my slab with a smile that was probably too smug. He squinted at me like he wanted to knock it off my face.
We weren't done.
Next came physical assessment. The training yard was lined with obstacle courses, target ranges, and sparring circles. Instructors barked orders while cadets scrambled to climb walls, sprint tracks, and lift weights twice their size.
I kept it light. Enough to pass, not enough to stand out. Too much strength, too much speed, that would draw eyes I didn't want. The shadows itched under my skin, begging to slip out, but I shoved them down. Not here. Not now.
Greg, bless him, tripped over a hurdle and face-planted so hard the cadets nearby roared with laughter. I hauled him up by the collar before they could circle like vultures.
"Style points," I said, patting him down. "Ten out of ten."
He groaned. "Remind me again why I listen to you?"
"Because I make you look better by comparison."
And then came sparring.
That's where I screwed up.
The instructor paired me with a boy twice my size, muscles stacked like bricks. Imperial stock, the kind they probably bred for war. The kind who looked at me, dark hair, glasses, too relaxed, and saw a free win.
The match started. He charged. I ducked, sidestepped, and let him stumble past. The cadets laughed. He snarled, embarrassed.
He came at me again. I flicked his wrist, twisted, and put him flat on his back before I could stop myself. Too clean. Too practiced.
The yard went silent.
I stood over him, heart hammering. My smile snapped into place. "Guess I'm just lucky."
Greg was already clapping. "Yeah! Lucky! He's the luckiest guy alive!"
The instructor's eyes narrowed. Not angry, not impressed. Calculating. Like he'd just seen something he wasn't supposed to.
I hated that look.
Because in the Empire, when someone looked at you like that, it meant they weren't going to forget you.
By the time evening rolled around, the Academy had wrung us out like dirty laundry. Written exams, obstacle courses, sparring drills, endless speeches about "honor" and "loyalty." My head should've been pounding, but instead it buzzed with restless energy.
Greg collapsed onto his bunk in the dorms like a corpse. "I'm dead. Officially dead. Write it on my gravestone: Here lies Greg, tripped to death by a hurdle."
"You'd need a gravestone first," I said, dropping onto my own bed. "I'm pretty sure they just recycle cadets into ration bars."
He made a noise halfway between a laugh and a groan.
The dorm was noisy, full of boys bragging about who ran fastest, who hit hardest, who the instructors liked best. I stayed quiet. Easier to blend. But apparently, quiet wasn't an option tonight.
Because that's when she showed up.
Elara. Tight bun, green eyes, posture so stiff it looked like she'd been carved from marble. She walked straight up to my bunk like she'd been rehearsing it all day.
"You think you're clever," she said. No greeting. No hesitation. Just straight to the kill.
I glanced at Greg, who peeked out from under his blanket like a mouse watching a cat. "Most days, yeah," I said. "Why? Looking to hire a tutor?"
Her eyes narrowed. "You made a joke during the Chancellor's address."
"Correction," I said, holding up a finger. "I made a perfectly timed joke. There's a difference."
"That wasn't funny," she snapped.
"Greg laughed," I said.
Greg immediately dove back under his blanket. "Don't drag me into this," he mumbled.
Elara crossed her arms. "You're undermining discipline. The Academy is about order. Structure. If you can't respect that, you'll fail."
I leaned back on my elbows, staring up at her. "You watched me take down that brick-wall cadet earlier, right?"
Her jaw tightened. "Yes."
"And the test scores? You probably saw those too."
"Yes."
"Then I've already passed," I said with a grin. "I'm just choosing to be entertaining about it."
She looked at me like she wanted to strangle me with my own bedsheet. But under the anger, I caught something else, a flicker of curiosity. Not that she'd admit it.
"People like you burn out fast," she said finally. "You don't last here."
"Good thing I'm not like me, then."
Her glare sharpened. Then she turned on her heel and stalked off, spine so straight it was a miracle she didn't snap in half.
Greg peeked out again. "You realize she's terrifying, right?"
"Terrifyingly boring," I muttered.
But the truth was, I'd noticed her watching me during drills. Her eyes weren't just judging, they were cataloguing. Measuring. Like she was already planning what box to put me in.
And that was worse than terrifying.
Because I had enough boxes already.