It was the first day of the week. The sun came through the window at the wrong angle for this room—a sharp, thin blade of light that cut across the floorboards and hit the far wall too early. Dominic had known that since the first week, but he’d never bothered adjusting the curtain.

He sat up. Swung his legs over the side of the bunk. The morning carried the usual smells: someone’s boot oil, the faint mildew that lived in the corners no matter how often the academy staff scrubbed at it.

Across the room, his roommate Pell was already getting dressed, his back turned, moving with the quiet efficiency of someone who preferred to exist without commentary. They had shared this space for three years and exchanged perhaps two hundred words total, which suited both of them fine.

Dominic washed up and dressed without rushing. He pulled his academy coat off the chair back, checked the buttons out of habit—one loose, third from the top, still holding. Then he crouched by the foot of his bunk and began sorting through what little was under it. Not much.

A spare set of clothes, folded flat. A battered notebook with a cracked spine. A small box of personal documents he kept wrapped in oilcloth, the fabric worn soft at the creases.

He stacked them beside the bed in a loose pile.

Pell noticed. He was almost out the door, hand on the frame, but he paused and looked back.

"Moving out?" he said.

"Yeah, within the next two days," Dominic said.

Pell considered that for a moment. His face didn’t change. Then he nodded, said nothing further, and left. His footsteps faded down the hall.

Dominic looked at the pile. Small enough to carry in one trip. He’d known it would be.

He straightened, picked up his satchel, and headed to class.

***

Combat fundamentals met in the lower courtyard on Lunedays. Stone flags worn smooth by decades of boots, open sky overhead, the smell of chalk dust and old sweat baked into the walls. Instructor Garrett ran it the way he ran everything: without tolerance for wasted time.

He was a well-built man. Mid-fifties, close-cropped silver hair, arms that had seen real use. He’d been a B-rank adventurer before a knee injury retired him early, and he taught like it—movement, spacing, how to not die in the first three seconds of a fight. His voice carried across the courtyard without effort.

Dominic came in with the rest of the morning group and found his place near the back. Garrett was already on the floor, walking a pair of second-years through a basic guard stance. He corrected one student’s elbow without breaking stride—a quick tap, a muttered word—moved on, and then his eyes found Dominic across the courtyard.

He didn’t stop moving. But he lifted his chin slightly. A small acknowledgment.

After the warm-up drills, while the students cycled through sparring pairs and the courtyard filled with the scuff of boots and the clack of practice weapons, Garrett passed close to Dominic and said, without looking at him, "Heard you were delayed coming back to the academy."

"I was," Dominic said, not giving away much.

Garrett’s gaze stayed on the sparring pairs. "You know... your father had great footwork... Waste for a man that big to move that quietly." He said it the way people said things they’d been carrying for a while. His eyes went somewhere else for a moment—somewhere beyond the courtyard walls. Then he moved on.

Dominic kept his eyes forward.

Garrett had known Edmund. They’d been adventuring companions and drinking buddies until the tragedy. Dominic sensed a weight behind the man’s eyes, the look of someone who felt he’d failed a friend, yet had found it remarkably easy to mostly stay silent while that friend’s son was being dragged through the dirt of the school courtyard.

***

Victor Harwick was there. He usually was for Luneday fundamentals, when his schedule forced him down from whatever elevated section of the academy the nobility provision entitled him to. He was taller than most of the students, broad through the shoulders, with the arrogant attitude of someone who had never needed to earn being in a room. Two of his usual companions stood slightly behind him, their postures loose but attentive.

Victor had not looked at Dominic yet. He was finishing a sparring rotation, doing it well enough—the practiced efficiency of someone who had trained with private tutors before any academy class. Then the rotation ended and he was toweling his hands and he let his eyes drift across the courtyard.

They landed on Dominic.

"Still here," Victor said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

A few heads turned. The sparring nearest them faltered.

"I thought cockroaches scattered when the lights came on," Victor said. "It seems one came back."

Light laughter from his companions. A couple of students nearby looked away. One girl kept watching, her expression caught somewhere between interest and discomfort.

Garrett’s voice cut across the courtyard. "Harwick. Rotation." Even and calm.

Victor turned back without hurrying. A smile stayed on his face. The point had been made. He didn’t need to oversell it.

Dominic had not moved. His eyes had not changed. He stood where he was and breathed, slow and even, and watched the rest of the drill period the same way he had watched the beginning of it.

***

The mid-morning break between second and third session ran fifteen minutes. Most students moved toward the refectory or the covered walkways along the left wing, their voices bouncing off the stone. Dominic had been heading toward the library annex, where he could sit quietly for the next couple of minutes without speaking to anyone.

He got as far as the corridor joining the main hall to the east passage before they found him.

Not Victor. Victor didn’t run these errands himself.

But his people. Reyes was with them.

Dominic saw Reyes and noted it, like his presence meant nothing. Reyes looked the same as he always had: a few years older than most students, solid through the chest, with a face that had never been particularly readable. He’d been a decent team leader until he’d been paid to be something else.

One of the others caught Dominic by the arm from behind and pulled him sideways into the alcove between two columns. The space was open enough that anyone passing at the far end of the corridor might see what was happening—but not their faces.

Dominic did not resist. He noted the grip. Strong enough to be confident, but not so hard as to leave marks. Someone had told them to be somewhat careful.

Reyes stepped in front of him. Close. Making a statement.

"You shouldn’t have come back," Reyes said.

Dominic said nothing. His eyes almost looked bored.

Reyes hit him.

It was a solid punch. Short travel, straight across the jaw. Dominic’s head turned with it. He tasted copper, and the brief, bright flare of pain bloomed from his back teeth to his temple. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

He stayed on his feet.

Then he laughed.

It was a small sound. Like something that just came up from his heart because the whole thing was, on some level, genuinely absurd. Reyes had left him on a dungeon floor and filed a death report. And here he was throwing punches in an academy corridor like that was the logical continuation.

Reyes’ expression shifted. Something in the laugh had put him off balance.

Dominic turned his head back. Met Reyes’ eyes. Then he gathered the blood collecting along his lower lip and spat it directly into Reyes’ face.

Reyes flinched back, a red spray across his cheek.

"Hmm. Red suits you," Dominic said.

A moment of absolute stillness.

Then Reyes’ jaw tightened, and the hand gripping Dominic’s arm dragged him half a step forward, and Reyes leaned in close enough that his voice dropped to something private. "You think this is a game."

"No." Dominic let his voice settle into something quieter. "I think you’re working very hard for very small results. It’s almost sad."

Victor’s voice came from the left. He had appeared at the edge of the alcove, watching. A spectator at something he had arranged. "Nobody’s going to miss you if you disappear again, Kane."

Dominic did not look at Victor. He kept his eyes on Reyes.

Reyes’ free hand had curled into a fist.

And then something changed in his face. Garrett was standing at the corridor junction. Arms crossed. Not approaching. Not speaking. Just present, and watching.

Reyes looked back at Dominic. The impulse cooled but didn’t disappear.

He shoved Dominic backward.

Dominic hit the wall, caught himself on the column, and went down onto one knee. Stone was cold through the fabric of his trousers. He let the moment pass, then stood. He straightened his coat. Adjusted the satchel strap on his shoulder.

Reyes was already walking away. Victor turned with him. One of the others tossed a final warning over his shoulder: "This is not even close to over." The last of them didn’t even bother with words, just held up two middle fingers as they retreated.

They moved off down the corridor, footsteps echoing into silence.

Dominic wiped his lip with the back of his hand and looked at what it left. Red against his knuckles. Still warm. He held his hand there a moment, just looking, and then he lowered it.

***

The instructor stopped a few feet away. His eyes moved over Dominic’s face, quick, assessing the swelling already starting along the jaw.

"I’m fine," Dominic said, before Garrett could ask.

Garrett looked at him for a moment. The way he had looked at Dominic’s father once, probably. As if searching for something familiar.

Then he uncrossed his arms and said, "Third session starts in ten minutes."

He walked back toward the courtyard.

Dominic watched him go.

Cockroach, Victor had called him.

He touched his lip with the tip of his tongue. Tasted iron and spat it onto the stone. Then he turned and walked in the opposite direction, back straight, pace unhurried, the blood still cooling on his mouth.

They had no idea.

That was what stayed on his mind, as the corridor opened out ahead of him and the noise of the academy morning filled the space around him like nothing had happened.

They had absolutely no idea.

Behind him, at the corridor’s end, Garrett stood and did not move for a long moment. His arms were still uncrossed. His hands were loose at his sides.

He watched the space where Dominic had been.

Then he turned and walked back to his courtyard, and said nothing to anyone about what he had seen.