Tony kept walking until his legs felt like they were carrying someone else's body. Ash crunched beneath his boots, and every ragged breath tasted like burnt wire. The fortress had shrunk behind him into a jagged silhouette against the sky—one he'd once imagined dominating, now reduced to charcoal and memory.
He had expected a second night of silence, the kind that falls after the screams stop and all that remains are distant fireworks and well-meaning government announcements. Instead, he found a shadow sitting cross-legged on a toppled column, a figure as composed as if they'd wandered in from a perfectly dry café.
Tony stopped dead.
The figure's hood was up. They'd cleaned each boot to a mildly irritating shine. The only thing out of place was the way they held an object—an insignia, faintly glowing—between two gloved fingers like it was a rare coin.
"Who are you?" Tony asked. He tried to sound tough and produced something that sounded like a question someone asks when they discover a raccoon under their porch.
The figure smiled without hurrying. It was a small, dry thing, the kind of smile that makes you both uncomfortable and suspicious. "Someone who used to be inside the machine," they said. "Former Academy. Trusted. Tired of the show."
Tony blinked. "Inside the machine?"
They tapped the emblem. Up close the mark was familiar in the vaguest way—sleek lines, a faint halo. The Heroes Academy. Tony had seen recruits parade past grading towers. Kids with bright capes. Smiles that didn't look like homework.
"You're saying you're a hero?" Tony asked, because that's what people say when somebody mysterious hands them something shiny.
"No." The figure's voice had a rasp like wind through a pipe. "I'm saying I know how the Academy works. I know what it looks for. I know how they turn ordinary kids into the kind of men and women who are worshiped thirty feet high on bronze plinths. I also know how predictable their rituals are."
Tony pulled his shoulders up as if he could wrap himself in them. "And you want… what? To help me? To teach me to swing a sword without smashing a chandelier?"
The figure shook their head. "I won't train you, Tony. Not in the way you hope. I won't make you a killing machine. I will give you a map. A way inside. And a truth: the Academy gives power to those who wear their uniform. The promotion ladder leads to real abilities. Power that the public calls 'superpower,' the Academy calls 'field certification.' Get in. Climb the ladder. Get certified. Get close—so close you can breathe the same air as the heroes—and then kill them."
Tony blinked slowly. The sentence stalled somewhere between madness and the kind of thing that might be written on a very dark pamphlet. "So… basically, go to hero school, graduate, get a cape, then stab them? Is that… you know… legal?"
"I didn't say it was legal," the figure said with a calm that suggested they had better things to say about legality than Tony did. "I said it was possible."
Tony's laugh came out thin. "You expect me to enroll in the Academy? Me? I still get tangled in my own cloak."
The hooded person folded their hands on their knees like someone explaining a recipe. "The Academy loves stories. They recruit from the bottom up: adorable, scrappy kids with 'potential'. They give them a name, teach them posture, sell them the idea of 'justice'. And because the public breathes their every line, promotions follow. Promotion equals resources. Resources equal access. Access equals opportunity. You start at the edge; you end up in the center."
"You sound like a recruiter," Tony said suspiciously. "Are you trying to sell me into hero-ism?" He imagined the Academy brochure: "Be the best you — in glorious armor!" He pictured himself smiling on an ad and immediately felt dizzy.
"I thought you would be harder to convince," the figure said. "You're already halfway. The rest is logistics."
Tony kicked at a pebble until it broke into dust. "And why would you help me get close? You said you were tired of the show." He squinted. "Are you joining me because you hate them, too?"
The figure's face shadowed. "I left because I saw what that machine does. The Academy dresses itself in light and prays the public will forget the hands that pull the puppet strings. I am an insider who chose to step outside. I can give you the route, the timing, the weak checkpoints. But I won't be on your battlefield when it begins. That has to be your mess."
Tony's chest warmed at the word insider. He imagined secret tunnels and backroom handshakes, a path only whispered about in bars where men traded rumors and regrets. The idea lodged itself in his head like a splinter.
"Also," the figure continued, and there was an edge to their voice, "if you get promoted, you may be eligible for augmentation training."
Tony cocked his head. "Aug-what-now?"
"Augmentation. The Academy certifies certain recruits for experimental augmentation—gene stabilization fields, guided energy amplification, that rubbish. The ones who pass get abilities. The ones who fail get nice medals and a life in their hometown. You know how promotions work: tests, field assignments, public PR opportunities. The higher you go, the more they trust you. The more they trust you, the more secrets you can touch."
Tony's brain misfired in the strangest way. On the one hand there was the image of him stumbling through drill formations, being cheered on by a stadium of people who would never suspect he was an exile in disguise. On the other, the practical problem of him—no power, poor balance, vocal range that might politely be called "limited." He imagined bursting into the Academy chapel and being offered a cape.
"If I join, I get powers?" he said, because life had taught him to believe in fairy tales when the alternative was ashes.
"You might," the figure said. "Or you might get a desk job at a commendable municipal office. There is no promise. But there is a path. And with the right timing and a little cunning, you could be placed where it hurts."
Tony thought of his hands—callused and clumsy. He thought of the ruins behind him, the banners, the faces that had laughed at him. He thought of the heroes, everything immaculate and polished and worshiped, and something inside him sharpened.
"What's the catch?" he asked.
The figure's smile hardened. "The catch is that the system is hollow at its center. It will work to swallow you. It will give you an identity and demand you wear it. It will make you complicit, or it will spit you out. You'll be asked to betray people you love. You'll be offered honor and told it is the same thing. You will gain the very thing you hate and be tempted to keep it. If you're not careful, you will become one of them."
"Sounds fun." Tony's grin was half-deranged, half-delighted. "So I have to sell my soul for a promotion and a cape, then murder a few people, and then what? Wrap up my villain side-hustle with a nice bow?"
"Don't trivialize fate," said the figure, though they patted Tony's shoulder in a distinctly non-threatening way. "Or won't you be the one to rewrite the fate they wrote for everyone else."
Tony stared at the insignia again. It hummed faintly, warm as if it held a heartbeat. He wanted to ask a hundred questions—how to falsify an application, where to sleep, whether the Academy had a good cafeteria—but the figure stood up, as if the conversation had already run long enough.
"You'll need a new name," they said. "A clean background. A story that appeals to the public. Something tragic but hopeful. You'll need to apply right away. There's a recruitment drive in the city in three days. Disappear from here, get a wash that doesn't smell like despair, and stand in line. Be charming. Be lucky."
Tony imagined himself in line: a ragged man in a suit, elbowing for a spot, trying his best to appear non-apocalyptic. He pictured the recruiters nodding politely as he lied about his school record, his civic engagements, and his anxiety. He pictured himself taking carefully contrived photos—hero-in-the-making lifestyle shots—and, for some reason, he laughed.
"You make it sound so easy," Tony said. "You make it sound like a holiday special. 'Step One: Be Heroic. Step Two: Gain Power. Step Three: Commit Dramatic Villainy.'"
The figure inclined their head once. "I don't make it easy. I make it possible. Possibility is enough for people like you."
Tony swallowed. The last grunt in the ruins of the Black Haws, the man who tripped over his own shoelaces in the middle of charge, suddenly felt a different kind of hunger. Not just the ache to see the heroes burn but a more practical craving—the desire to infiltrate and to be taken seriously, at least enough to be dangerous.
"Alright," he said. He felt ridiculous when he made the decision, like a child picking a dare. "I'll do it. I'll join the Academy."
The figure watched him with an expression that might have been approval if one squinted hard and misread emotion. "Good. Don't tell them everything. Let them dress you. Let them feed you slogans. Learn their cadence. Learn their rituals. And when you are in, send one signal to me. I will tell you what to do next."
"What do I call you?" Tony asked. The ruins seemed suddenly colder, as if the night had remembered their conversation and wanted to eavesdrop.
"You can call me Elias," the figure said. "Elias Kade. Former instructor at the Academy. Informal adviser to those who go where they shouldn't. Now go. Find a barber. And for heaven's sake wash the ash out of your hair."
Tony glanced at his reflection in a puddle. He had the look of a man who had slept in an oven. He pictured a barber looking at his face and nodding like a polite executioner. The grin he gave Elias was a mix of dread and terrible excitement.
"I'll need a suit," Tony said. "And shoes that don't singe. And a cooler backstory."
"Start small," Elias said. "A factory worker. An orphan with a seat in the city's junior sports program. Something with heart. The Academy eats heart. Feed it enough of that, and it will open."
Elias turned and, without another word, slipped into the darker folds of the ruins, the emblem in his hand fading like a small star.
Tony stood alone, staring at the place where the figure had been. For a long time he just breathed, as if trying to prove that he still could. Then he let out a noise that could have been a laugh or a sob and started walking toward the city.
He had a plan that was barely a plan: apply, climb, earn their trust, and find a way to close the throat of their perfection. He also had a ridiculous list of immediate tasks: find clothes that fit, explain why he had ash in his hair at an application interview, and not trip on the way to his destiny.
The city lights burned invitingly ahead a place full of people who cheered at parades and hung wreaths for men with capes. Somewhere under those shining banners, in halls with polished floors and smiling recruiters, Tony would stand and tell a lie that would change everything.
He tucked Elias's suggestion into the back of his head and began to imagine a new face nicer teeth, straighter posture, charisma he did not own. In the space between that desperate fantasy and the actual man shuffling into the city was a decision, as small and as stupid as any other, but which would determine the shape of the next many years.
Tony tightened his hands into fists, tasted the ash on his palms, and smiled.
"Hero school," he said aloud. "Alright, you glittery bastards. Let's see how well you like your icons edited."
Then he started walking faster. The long, ridiculous climb had begun.