The carriage rocked slightly as it veered onto a cobbled road, the iron wheels grinding against uneven stone. Izen sat across from two masked riders in long grey cloaks—silent escorts from the Academy's outer division. Neither had spoken since they departed before dawn, and neither needed to. Their presence wasn't for protection. It was a reminder.
The world outside the Academy was no less cruel, only more chaotic. There were no instructors to oversee your steps, no rules whispered in candlelit halls. Out here, failure didn't mean a mark on your record. It meant blood on stone.
Through the cracked window, the horizon rolled into view. The city of Veltaris emerged like a slow wound in the land—vast, jagged, and endlessly shifting. Towers leaned into the sky like broken fingers, while market tents bloomed in the alleys like fungus. The scent of ash, oil, and salt from the nearby canal district wafted into the cabin, thick and acrid.
The city had no symmetry. No center. It sprawled like a fever dream, built and rebuilt over generations of conquest, collapse, and rebirth. Izen's eyes narrowed. He could already feel the rot beneath the surface.
And somewhere in that rot, his mission waited.
He kept the journal close—pressed to his ribs beneath his travel tunic. Its latest entry, barely deciphered the night before, hinted at a recent purge in the Veltaran upper circles. Assassins embedded as scribes, mistresses, and errand boys—cleaned out in a single sweep. It wasn't just about eliminating spies. Someone was sending a message.
The Council had enemies. Enemies with reach.
And they were growing bolder.
The carriage stopped without warning. One of the cloaked riders stepped out and gestured without looking back. Izen gathered his satchel and followed, his boots hitting the wet stone with a muted thud. The street around them twisted sharply downhill, descending into the pulsing heart of Veltaris.
Crowds pressed together in endless streams. Children ducked beneath carts, traders barked in ten dialects, and street performers juggled rusted daggers to pockets full of coin. Overhead, laundry lines crisscrossed between balconies like spider silk. Somewhere nearby, someone was crying. Somewhere else, laughing. Life didn't pause for the subtle gears of assassination.
They made their way to a crooked stone building tucked between a burnt tavern and a bathhouse belching steam. A dull bronze placard marked it as "The Scarlet Jib"—a name that meant nothing to most, but had been encoded into Izen's mission scroll.
Inside, the scent of vinegar and cured meat clung to the air. A squat woman behind the bar didn't even glance up as they entered. Without a word, she reached beneath the counter and passed the rider a folded slip of paper.
He read it, nodded once, and turned to Izen. "Room three. Wait."
Then he left.
Izen climbed the stairs, the wood groaning beneath his feet. He opened the door to room three cautiously—half-expecting a knife to greet him. But the room was empty. Simple. A desk, a bed, and a cracked basin.
He placed his satchel on the bed and sat down. The mattress wheezed. His eyes lingered on the single candle by the desk, its wick unburned.
He breathed in slowly.
Time felt thinner here. More uncertain.
He was alone for nearly an hour before the door opened without a knock. A woman entered—tall, wearing a sleeveless black coat lined with silver thread. Her posture was languid, like a cat who knew it couldn't be caught. Her hair was tied high in a tight knot, her eyes hidden behind a pale grey veil.
"You're smaller than I expected," she said.
Izen didn't rise. "You must be Lys."
Her lips twitched, not quite a smile. "And you must be the coin-boy."
She moved to the window, pulling the curtain aside to look out at the street. "You're green. No amount of Academy training changes that. The city will chew on your bones and spit out whatever's left. But the Council seems to like you."
"Do you always introduce yourself with threats?" Izen asked, voice even.
"No," she said. "Only when they're necessary."
Lys turned from the window and tossed a folded scrap of parchment onto the desk. It unfurled slightly, revealing a name written in faded ink. "Sir Renner Valche."
"He's a merchant-lord who deals in rare imports and even rarer poisons. Controls one of the three canal districts. Recently he's been hoarding political favors like coin and may be aligned with the faction trying to root out Council spies."
"What's the job?" Izen asked.
Lys gave him a long look. "Observe. Gather names. Map his habits. No blood. Not yet."
The restraint surprised him.
The Academy had trained them to kill. Precise, clean, and quick. But here, the mission was subtler. Slower.
"Assassins don't always kill," Lys said, reading his expression. "The smart ones just make others disappear."
She leaned in, voice dropping. "You want to survive in Veltaris, you'll need more than blades and secrets. You'll need to become part of the city. A whisper. A habit. Something people stop noticing."
The next three days passed in cautious silence.
Izen followed Valche from a distance—never too close, never too obvious. The man was older than he expected. Fat but graceful, like a cat that had grown lazy with power. He wore rings on every finger and drank citrus wine at every meal. His estate was a fortress behind the canals, guarded by mercenaries dressed as servants.
But it wasn't Valche that interested Izen.
It was the people around him. Their eyes.
Too many watched the shadows. Too many tensed when they passed empty alleyways.
They were afraid.
Each night, Izen returned to the Scarlet Jib and recorded his findings in the journal. He coded every entry, just as he had been taught—using old merchant sigils and reversed dates. But more than that, he began adding observations of his own. Patterns. Possibilities.
A meeting at dusk always followed by a boat launched upriver.
A blacksmith's daughter who delivered messages but never returned the same way twice.
A courier whose right boot didn't match his left.
Lys never asked what he saw. She didn't need to. She was always one step ahead, her presence as steady and silent as her knives.
But even she seemed tense on the fourth night.
"There's movement in the canals," she told him, voice low over dinner. "Something's shifting. Be ready."
"For what?" he asked.
Lys didn't answer.
She only handed him a mask—white ceramic, marked with three inked dots.
The fifth night changed everything.
Izen slipped into the narrow corridor behind Valche's estate, dressed as a porter delivering wine. His hands were smudged, his posture stooped. He muttered in a slurred dialect that made him nearly invisible to the guards.
But as he crossed into the servant's quarters, he felt it.
Time stilled.
Not stopped. Just... slowed.
It was like the pause before thunder. Like the moment when a blade hesitates in the air, not yet descending.
He blinked.
The world returned.
His hands were trembling, though the crate on his back remained steady.
He kept walking.
He didn't understand it yet, but he felt it again—like something deep in his bones had brushed against a wall only he could see.
A crack in the hourglass.
A breath between ticks.
He returned to the inn late, soaked with sweat, his mind a storm of questions he couldn't voice.
Lys was already there, sharpening a blade that didn't need sharpening.
"Tomorrow," she said, "we enter the estate directly. The council wants the names on his guest ledger. They suspect he's hosting agents from the Freeport Coalition."
"Traitors?"
"Or buyers. Makes no difference."
That night, Izen didn't sleep.
He stared at the ceiling and thought of time.
Not as something that moved forward, but as something with folds. With edges.
The memory of his mother returned—her final words. Her blood cooling beneath his hands.
She had whispered something then. Something he couldn't remember.
But he would.
Soon.
He had to.