It didn't stop after that night.
They just got smarter.
Faster.
Hungrier.
One assassin became two.
Two became four.
Sometimes they didn't come with blades anymore.
Sometimes it was a poisoned drink left in my room.
Sometimes it was a tripwire across the training field at midnight, set just low enough to kill if you moved too fast and didn't notice.
---
I learned.
Painfully.
You can't train paranoia.
You earn it.
You carve it into the meat of your instincts with every close call, every scar that doesn't heal quite right.
---
Some nights, I couldn't sleep.
Not because of fear.
Because the adrenaline wouldn't leave my veins.
I'd lie there in my bunk, staring at the rafters overhead, feeling the faintest tremble in my fingers, listening for a step that wasn't there.
My body ready to kill long before my mind caught up.
---
The Academy masters didn't comment on the bruises anymore.
The broken fingers.
The fractured ribs.
At first they'd questioned me, offered polite half-concern.
Now they just looked at me the way you look at a blade too long left to rust.
A waste.
Or a warning.
---
Arin noticed.
Of course he did.
The idiot had a way of seeing through things you didn't want seen.
"You're different," he muttered one night after a sparring session where I'd nearly crushed his windpipe without meaning to. "Harder."
I shrugged.
"Better," I said instead.
Because saying 'emptier' would have made it real.
---
Serenya never said anything.
She didn't need to.
She just watched.
Silent, silver eyes narrowing whenever I moved a little too fast, cut a little too deep.
Measured me.
Weighed me.
Like a merchant examining a blade he might have to use — or sell.
---
I didn't hate her for it.
I understood.
I wasn't sure I trusted myself either anymore.
---
The Fourth Fang — the thing that saved my life that snowy night — wasn't stable yet.
Not really.
It was brute force.
A hammer swing pretending to be a scalpel.
I could feel it every time I tried to use it after that first night.
Too much aura leaked.
Too much breath burned away too fast.
A real master would have seen the gaps in a heartbeat and gutted me.
---
So I trained.
Harder.
Smarter.
Longer than anyone else.
While the other students slept, I was outside, barefoot in the cold, slashing my blade through empty air, forcing the breath deeper into my core.
Making it bend.
Making it obey.
Or trying to.
---
Sometimes, I got it almost right.
The breath moved smoother.
The aura compressed tighter along the edge of the blade.
And for a heartbeat, I felt something close to real power stirring under my skin.
Something sharp enough to survive in the world I was heading toward.
---
Other times, the backlash sent me to my knees coughing blood, gripping my ribs while the world spun and my aura burned out like a snapped tendon.
Nobody teaches you that in the Academy.
How it feels when your own breath betrays you.
When your own blood tries to kill you from the inside out.
---
I started keeping count.
How many days since the last serious assassination attempt.
How many scars.
How many victories.
Not because I needed to.
Because if I didn't, I might start thinking I was just another student again.
A boy with a sword.
Instead of what I was becoming.
---
A survivor.
A weapon.
A thing that breathes because breathing hurts less than stopping.
---
The world outside the Academy was changing, too.
Whispers reached even our safe stone halls.
Skirmishes along the borders.
Assassinations.
Noble houses falling, swallowed by enemies too subtle to name.
---
They called it politics.
They called it restructuring.
I called it war without banners.
---
Every duel at the Academy felt sharper now.
Every spar heavier.
Like we were practicing not for tournaments, but for the last fight of our lives.
Maybe we were.
Maybe the masters knew it, too, and just stopped pretending otherwise.
---
I started noticing how some of the other students flinched when I passed them in the halls.
Not all.
Not the strong ones.
But the ones who relied too much on perfect form.
Perfect theory.
Perfect bloodlines.
They smelled death on me now.
Even if they didn't know how to name it.
---
I didn't mind.
I didn't need their smiles.
I didn't need their respect.
I needed my sword.
My breath.
My own two hands.
---
Winter came again before I realized it.
The snow laid itself out across the Academy grounds like a shroud.
The training fields glittered under frost.
And I stood there one morning, alone, watching the first light of dawn crack against the mountains—
—and I felt nothing.
No awe.
No fear.
No anger.
Just the cold.
Just the steady pulse of blood through old wounds.
---
They said we were preparing for our future.
That the Academy would send us out to lead.
To rule.
To shape the continents.
---
Maybe they were right.
Maybe some of us would.
But not me.
I wasn't made to rule anymore.
I was made to survive.
Made to kill, if need be.
---
I tightened the leather strap around my sword hilt until the calluses on my palms ached.
Listened to the leather creak.
The sound was almost comforting.
---
Another winter survived.
Another scar added.
Another breath stolen from whatever gods thought they could snuff me out.
---
Soon, they'd call us all together.
Soon, they'd announce the final trials.
The tournament.
The real bloodletting.
---
But not yet.
For now, I stood alone in the snow.
Breathing.
Waiting.
Sharpening.