Izen didn't sleep that night.
Not even after the chapel doors had closed behind him. Not after the torchlight in the east wing had dimmed. Not even after he returned to his dormitory, the scrollcase held tightly to his chest like a weapon he didn't know how to use.
His body rested, but his mind reeled, tangled in too many voices.
Most of them were his own.
He sat cross-legged on the floor with his back against the bed frame, the wax-sealed scroll resting between his knees. For an hour he simply stared at it, unsure if breaking the seal would tear open more than just old parchment. The case was older than it looked. Cracked leather, hand-stitched seams, and a faint symbol pressed into the wax cap.
A spiral.
Just like the one on the coin. Just like the one in the chapel. Just like the one on the corpse's chest.
But this one wasn't etched or burned or carved.
It was embossed—official.
He didn't open it until the sky beyond the dormitory window began to pale.
The wax peeled back with a brittle crack, flaking like dead skin.
Inside were four pages. Thin vellum, handwritten in ink so faded it looked like charcoal. The first page was a standard contract: date, target, handlers, signature. But it wasn't his mother's name listed under "Target."
It was his.
And beneath it, in looping script that twitched at the corners: "Extraction. Level Black. Subject must not be terminated."
He read it twice.
Then a third time.
The words didn't change.
His hands did.
By the time he rolled the parchment back into the case, his fingers had started to tremble. Not from shock, but from something older. Something quieter. The feeling you get when the world shifts beneath your feet and you realize the ground you trusted was always hollow.
A lie he'd believed for too long.
His mother hadn't been trying to escape.
She'd been trying to save him.
And he had killed her for it.
When morning bell rang, Izen dressed slowly.
He washed his face in cold water and didn't look at his reflection.
The halls were quiet. Classmates passed him without comment. A few glanced his way and looked quickly back, as though sensing something about him had changed. Or maybe he just wasn't hiding it anymore.
He tucked the scrollcase into his satchel and kept it close to his side.
Instructor Volen was waiting for them in the training yard.
The morning mist had burned off early, leaving the marble slick with dew. A line of sparring dummies had been arranged in a semicircle, and bundles of blunted weapons leaned against the outer wall. Volen stood with his hands behind his back, his eyes scanning each student as they arrived.
But when his gaze passed over Izen, it lingered.
Not long.
But long enough.
"Today," Volen announced, "you will demonstrate your capacity for efficiency. Not power. Not flair. Efficiency. You will each be assigned a target profile. You will study their movements, habits, and weaknesses. Then you will neutralize them. Blunt weapons only. No kill shots."
He waited a beat.
"Failure to incapacitate your target within sixty seconds will result in disciplinary action."
A hush fell over the students.
Most nodded without protest.
But Izen's mind was somewhere else.
His eyes flicked to Volen's hands. The man's gloves were worn at the knuckles. Scuff marks, bloodstains, and something newer—burn marks across the index fingers. As though he'd handled something hot recently.
A candle?
A sealing tool?
"Target profiles are randomized," Volen said. "Paired duels. Watch your posture."
Izen received his profile in a small sealed envelope. When he cracked it open, he expected a stranger's name. Maybe one of the loud-mouthed students from the dormitory. But what he saw instead stopped his breath cold.
Target: Kaelith Ven.
He almost crushed the note in his hand.
Volen's voice rang out again.
"Pairs: Izen and Kaelith. Morlen and Brek. Cassin and Aelric. The rest—observe and log results."
Kaelith didn't flinch when she read hers.
She met Izen's eyes across the yard, and in her gaze was something familiar.
Not surprise.
Resignation.
The others stepped back to give them space.
Volen walked past Izen and Kaelith without another word. No explanation. No warning. Just the faint trace of a smirk behind his grizzled beard.
The whistle blew.
The spar began.
Kaelith didn't move.
Neither did Izen.
They stood opposite each other on the wet stone, weapons in hand—she with a short baton, he with a practice dagger. Rain from the night before shimmered around them, puddling between cracks in the floor like a mirror that refused to reflect.
He stepped forward.
So did she.
Their blows were slow at first. Testing. Rhythm without force.
Then, Kaelith spun low and swept his legs. He jumped the arc, landed off-balance, feinted left. She caught his wrist and twisted. He rolled with it and struck her ribs with the flat of the dagger.
A hit.
But not decisive.
She winced, but didn't fall.
He pressed the advantage, driving her back toward the courtyard's stone bench.
Kaelith countered hard, elbowed his shoulder, and kneed his thigh. He stumbled.
She caught him by the collar—and whispered, so quietly only he could hear:
"They want us to kill each other."
Then she let go.
Time slowed.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
The air rippled at the edges of Izen's vision.
Sound dulled into a low thrum, like a heartbeat underwater. Kaelith's expression froze mid-motion, her baton still raised. The mist that had begun to drift through the yard paused in place, suspended like strands of silk in the air.
And in that breathless stillness, Izen felt it again.
That spiral inside him.
Turning.
A voice—not one he recognized—echoed in his skull.
Not in words. In sensation.
Pressure. Reversal. The pull of gravity spiraling inward.
His grip tightened on the dagger without meaning to.
Then, like the shudder of a heartbeat resuming, the world snapped back into place.
Kaelith moved again.
But not fast enough.
He stepped forward, disarmed her with a precise twist, and brought the dagger's hilt to her throat.
He didn't strike.
He didn't need to.
Volen called the match.
"Winner: Izen."
Applause rippled through the yard.
Some of it hesitant. Some of it surprised.
Kaelith lowered her eyes and backed away, rubbing her shoulder.
Izen stood perfectly still.
His body was still humming.
Something inside him had woken up—and it didn't want to sleep again.
Later that evening, he found Kaelith behind the apothecary wing, beneath the old iron staircase.
She was wrapping her ribs with gauze, but looked up the moment she heard him approach.
"Do you feel it now?" she asked.
He didn't pretend not to know what she meant.
"I saw time stop."
"No," she said. "You stopped it. You're beginning to remember."
Izen sat beside her.
The wall behind them was cold and moss-damp, but he didn't care.
"Why me?"
"Because your mother was a Spiral-bearer. And they bred you for this."
"Bred?" he echoed.
Kaelith nodded. "You were never meant to be just an assassin. You're something else entirely."
Izen's fingers found the coin in his pocket again.
The spiral was warm now. Not hot. Not burning.
Just alive.
"Why tell me this?" he asked.
"Because I'm not your enemy," she said softly. "But they are."
And she handed him a second scrollcase—this one engraved with Volen's sigil.