Izen didn't sleep.
Not that night. Not with the stench of the Vault still clinging to his skin, or the visions clanging in his skull like a pendulum against glass.
He sat by the window of the empty dormitory hall, the cracked spiral coin in one hand and a wet towel pressed to the back of his neck. Outside, the academy grounds stretched in silver silence. Faint clouds crawled across the moon. The black tower to the east blinked red once, then went dark again.
He wondered if Volen was watching.
He wondered how much they knew.
The chair had called him by name.
Not by the name they assigned him at the orphan ward. Not the false name in the academy registry. But his true name—Mirth. The one his mother whispered only when she thought no one was listening.
The same name written on his birth scroll, long burned. The name his instructors never once uttered.
Izen Mirth.
Subject Zero.
He curled the coin in his fingers.
It was broken, but not useless.
Like most things in this place.
He didn't know how long he sat like that, his breath fogging the window, his limbs aching, his mind cycling through faces. Volen. Kaelith. The instructor who bled from the eyes during orientation. The stone-faced matron from the Spiral Orphanage.
His mother.
Only her silhouette came back clearly. Not her eyes. Not her voice.
Just the image of her standing in front of something burning. Sword in one hand, her other pressed flat to Izen's chest. Telling him to run.
He had.
Now he was circling back.
By morning, his uniform was wrinkled and damp.
But he arrived at the training hall precisely on time.
A few others had gathered already—Ren, bruised and limping from his failed mission report; Tara, who no longer smiled when she passed Izen; and Hollen, the half-blind boy who read too much and spoke too little.
Kaelith entered last.
She said nothing. Gave no sign of recognition.
But her eyes lingered on Izen's chest—where the spiral coin now sat hidden, sewn into the inside of his collar.
Instructor Volen arrived three minutes late.
That alone told Izen something was off.
Volen was meticulous. Borderline obsessive. Every arrival, every motion was calculated down to the second. So when he walked in with his coat half-buttoned, his hair damp and his eyes ringed with sleeplessness, Izen knew.
He felt it too.
Something in the Vault had shaken even the Watchmaker.
"Group Six," Volen said, voice cracking faintly. "Today begins your second-tier examination."
None of them spoke.
Ren looked up. His face twitched. Izen noticed the subtle tape over one of his fingers—an injury, likely from punishment. Volen's way of reminding him to stay in line.
Volen turned his back to them and scrawled a word onto the old blackboard with white chalk.
Hegemony.
"This is not a combat test," Volen said. "Not entirely."
He circled the word like it was diseased.
"In your next assignment, you will observe the internal structure of one of the six controlling houses of this academy. Not from outside. From within. Each of you will be embedded as shadows among the serving class, apprentices, or aides. You will watch. Record. Understand who truly holds power."
Tara raised her hand. "Will this be graded?"
Volen didn't turn around. "It always is."
Izen didn't move.
Inside, though, his thoughts churned.
Hegemony. Power structure. Subtle infiltration.
This was different. More than just a lesson. This was orientation into the core of the academy's political web.
He had suspected it would eventually lead to this. But the timing… the night after the Vault… the coin breaking… Volen unraveling—
It was all too neat.
As if on cue, Volen turned toward him.
"Cadet Mirth."
Izen lifted his eyes.
"You will be placed within House Luthien. Under direct service to Advisor Selreth."
A beat of silence.
Tara's eyes widened slightly.
Kaelith's brow furrowed.
Even Ren shifted in place.
Volen didn't elaborate. He moved down the line, assigning the others to lesser-known houses—Lorn, Barath, Quen. Only Izen was sent into Luthien.
The house that handled the academy's inner security.
The house that managed intelligence, secrets, and containment.
He nodded once.
"Understood, sir."
But inside, he felt a wire tighten.
This wasn't a test.
This was a warning.
By dusk, Izen stood before the Luthien quarters.
The structure was smaller than the main dorms but far older—wrapped in black ivy and carved from obsidian stone, with only narrow windows and a gate made of woven silver threads. A pair of motionless guards stood by the door, masks carved in the shape of grieving angels.
He showed them the seal Volen had handed him.
They stepped aside without a word.
Inside, the air changed.
It was colder here.
Not in temperature, but in tone.
Servants walked in near silence, dressed in muted gray robes. Candles flickered blue, not orange. Every hallway was covered in red velvet and iron grates. There were no paintings. Only etched plaques in dead languages.
A woman in white greeted him.
She had no eyebrows. Her hair was braided tightly and wrapped like a crown of thorns around her scalp.
"You are the ghostling?"
"…Yes," Izen said.
She didn't ask for his name.
She simply turned and walked.
He followed her through a narrow corridor, then into a room that was both too small and too clean. One cot. One chair. One basin. One lock.
"You are to report to Advisor Selreth at sixth bell. Before then, you do not speak. You do not touch. You do not think loudly."
Izen tilted his head. "Think loudly?"
She stared at him without blinking.
He said nothing more.
That night, Izen did not sleep again.
But he learned.
He studied the pattern of servant rotations. The frequency of footsteps above his room. The pressure points on the locked window and the soft click of the guard's boots every twelve minutes outside the corridor.
At precisely the sixth bell, he was led through a spiraling stair into the upper wing.
There, he met Selreth.
She sat behind a screen.
He never saw her face.
Only the shadow it cast against the fabric—long-necked, birdlike, with hair like quills and fingers that moved too precisely. Her voice was gentle. Crisp.
"Izen Mirth," she said. "You carry an old name."
He said nothing.
She laughed once.
Then slid something under the screen.
It was a silver stopwatch.
But the dial had no numbers.
Just concentric circles, each with a single dot moving clockwise at different speeds.
"Tell me what you see."
Izen picked it up.
The dots moved at independent rhythms, but every seven seconds, they aligned perfectly, forming a line through the center of the watch's face.
He smiled faintly.
"A lie."
Selreth hummed.
"I thought so."
She didn't ask him to explain.
She simply nodded and dismissed him.
Back in his room, Izen opened the back casing of the watch and found a folded note tucked behind the mechanism.
In clean black ink, written in old dialect:
You are not the first. But you may be the last.The Spiral turns for no one.—M
That night, Kaelith slipped a note under his door.
It had only one word.
Soon.
Izen sat on the edge of his cot, stopwatch ticking in his palm.
And for the first time, he didn't try to understand it all.
He simply listened.
To the rhythm of lies.
To the spaces between gears.
To the breath of ghosts.