The word hung in the frigid air of the alley long after the two men had vanished. Master.
Kaden pushed himself up from the filth, his legs unsteady. The cold cobblestones beneath him, the stench of the tannery, the distant cry of a night watchman—all of it felt surreal. But the icy dread in his gut was real. The man in the fine cloak, the one who commanded the killer, had moved with an authority that felt… familiar. For a heart-stopping instant, the angle of the jaw, the set of the shoulders, had reminded him of someone. A shadow from a sunlit study.
No.
The denial was immediate, violent, born of a need so deep it felt like self-preservation. It was the fog, the stress, the madness of the last two days. His mind, starved for safety, was latching onto the nearest semblance of order. Professor von Heller was a scholar, a healer of minds, not a… master of assassins. The professor had given him coin, had seen the spark in him when no one else did. The idea was grotesque, a desecration of the only kindness he'd found in this cold stone city.
He clung to that thought like a lifeline. The hum beneath his skin had settled into a low, persistent thrum, a constant reminder of the Legacy and the hair in its tin. It felt attuned now, a compass needle pointing towards a void named Marco. But the other man… his mind shied away from the comparison, burying it under layers of exhausted disbelief.
He stumbled back to the college as dawn bled into the sky. The sight of the familiar spires sparked a weak, contradictory relief. This was his sanctuary, however imperfect. Professor von Heller's study, with its smell of old books and bergamot, felt more like home now than the bloody cottage.
His dorm room was empty, Leonhard already gone to prepare for the field trip. Kaden moved like an automaton. He scrubbed the alley grime from his hands until they were raw. He changed into the sturdy, oiled-cloth trousers and thick tunic required for the marshes. As he packed the knapsack—jars, trowel, gloves—his fingers brushed the cold tin and the dagger's plain hilt. They were anchors to a reality he was not ready to face.
He paused, then dug deeper into his trunk. From beneath a stack of woolens, he pulled out the small, heavy purse Silas had given him. He hadn't touched the coins. Now, he poured a few into his palm. They were good silver, minted with the Imperial eagle. The gesture had been one of pure, uncomplicated generosity. He was sure of it. He had to be. Slipping the coins into his pocket, he felt a fraction steadier. It was a tangible piece of the professor's faith in him.
---
The Blackwater Marshes were a two-hour cart ride east, a journey from the world of stone and logic into one of ooze and primordial whispers. Kaden sat apart on the wagon, watching the landscape soften and decay. The air grew thick with the smell of wet rot and vibrant, choking life.
Professor Brindle, the alchemist, barked instructions about glow-moss and bog-iron, warnings about methane pockets and sucking mud. "Pairs! Stay in pairs!"
A tap on his shoulder. Leonhard stood there, his pack meticulously organized, a brass instrument of his own design strapped to the side. "Looks like we're the leftovers, Rose. Partners?"
Kaden nodded, grateful for the other boy's unsentimental solidity.
Their assigned quadrant was a treacherous mosaic of grassy hummocks and black water. Mist curled around their ankles. The silence was a physical presence. Kaden worked mechanically, scraping moss into jars, his mind a prison of circling thoughts: his mother's final words, the alley, the ring, the word master. Over and over, his thoughts would drift to Silas's calm voice, his patient explanations in the quiet of his study, the way he'd laid a hand on Kaden's shoulder after a particularly brutal theory exam. "Potential, Kaden, is a seed that grows in darkness as well as light. You are not failing. You are rooting." At the time, it had felt like salvation.
Now, in the swamp's grim light, he tried to use those memories as a bulwark against the creeping suspicion. He wanted to believe. He needed to.
"You're gripping that trowel like you want to murder the mud," Leonhard observed without looking up from a peat sample.
Kaden glanced down. His knuckles were white. He forced his hand to relax. "It's this place. It gets under your skin."
"Literally, if you're not careful," Leonhard replied. "Stay on the solid bits. The pretty, mossy patches are the hungriest."
The afternoon wore on, the light fading into a dull grey. Kaden's internal hum grew more pronounced, as if the swamp's raw, decaying magic was vibrating at the same frequency as the Legacy. He felt unmoored, his senses stretching thin.
He was kneeling by a large, ink-black pool, reaching for a glint of bog-iron, when the ground gave way.
Not a slow sink, but a sudden, voracious liquefaction. The grassy tussock dissolved into icy slurry, pulling him down to his waist in an instant. The shock was paralyzing. He thrashed, but the mud only tightened its grip, cold and immense. A bubble of yellowish gas burst from the pool, the stench of rotten eggs filling his nostrils. Dizziness washed over him.
Panic, pure and mindless, took over. He was going to die here, swallowed by the anonymous muck, his mother's death unavenged, the Legacy wasted.
Become them.The command was a cold flare in the darkness of his terror.
Marco. The name was a hook. The hair in the tin was a key. In his drowning desperation, he didn't think of a full exchange. He thought of strength. Of survival instinct. He focused on the thrumming wire inside him, on the memory-fragment of the assassin's coiled, practical violence. He didn't need to be him. He just needed to borrow the part that wouldn't panic in the face of death.
He stopped fighting. He went still, forcing his screaming mind into a horrible, focused calm. He pictured the hair. He felt for the echo of the name. He reached.
The world shimmered, bleached of color for three heartbeats.
The mud's embrace changed. It was no longer a terrifying enemy, but a tactical problem. Cold efficiency flooded his limbs. Instincts that were not his own took over. He stopped trying to lift himself out. Instead, he threw his weight forward, spreading his arms wide, and began to swim across the surface of the muck in a brutal, flat crawl. It was a technique for crossing thin ice or quicksand, all economy of motion, every ounce of strength leveraged against the sucking pull.
He hauled himself, inch by agonizing inch, towards a knot of ancient, gnarled roots at the pool's edge. Just as his fingers closed around solid wood, the foreign strength vanished. The connection snapped. He was just Kaden again, weak and trembling, coated in freezing filth, clinging for life.
"ROSE! Saints above!"
Leonhard was there, face pale, thrusting his brass rod out. Kaden grabbed it, and with a heave, Leonhard dragged him onto firmer ground. Kaden collapsed, retching, his body wracked with shudders.
"What in the seven hells was that?" Leonhard breathed, eyes wide. "I've never seen anyone… swim the black mud."
"Didn't… want to die," Kaden choked out, the taste of peat and rot in his mouth.
Leonhard stared at him for a long moment, then simply grunted. "Fair enough." He offered a water skin. "Drink. Don't think about what you just swallowed."
As Kaden rinsed his mouth, his mud-caked hand brushed his pack. His numb fingers felt a hard, unfamiliar shape lodged beside the tin. Puzzled, he pulled it free.
It was a ring. A simple, tarnished silver band, crusted with peat and age.
It had not been there this morning.
A cold that had nothing to do with the swamp seeped into his bones. He turned it over. Inside the band, worn almost smooth, was an inscription. Not a name.
A date.The date of his mother's death.
And below it, a single, elegantly engraved word that felt like a knife twisting in his newly formed wound: WELCOME.
His breath hitched. This was a message. From the master. He was being watched. Played with. The sanctuary of the college, the comfort of Silas's mentorship—it was all an illusion. He was in a game whose rules he didn't know, and his opponent had just made the first move.
Terror threatened to swallow him whole. He looked up, half-expecting to see the cloaked figure standing in the mist. There was only the silent, grasping marsh.
And then, unbidden, a desperate, fragile thought rose from the depths of his fear: I need to tell the Professor. He'll know what this means. He'll help me.
The realization was both a comfort and a profound loneliness. In the whole vast, treacherous world, Silas von Heller was the only adult he felt he could trust. It was a conviction he clung to, even as the cold silver ring in his palm whispered a different, darker truth.