Micah Reed did not grow up in SkillHill. He was not born to a guild family or raised on combat doctrine.
He came from the outskirts, the unpoliced, half-forgotten edge of the Empire. Survival there was not trained, it was earned through blood and fists.
At ten, he had already taken a life. At twelve, he was recruited by a rogue mercenary guild and used as bait. By thirteen, he escaped them and handed the entire crew over to the Empire's army for a fee.
His dossier landed on the desk of the Rockville Skills Institute within a week.And unlike others, he didn't apply.
He was invited. He was too young to be a student but on merit, he was given a job as a cleaner. He made himself a man employed well by the government at the age of thirteen and the government promised to watch him and reward him later when he became of age but he was forgotten about a month into his job as a cleaner and he only got to keep it because he was cheap and good.
"Did you choose to be here?" Spencer Ali had asked the first time they shared a table in the mess hall. Micah didn't answer. Just kept eating.
Spencer sat anyways. Day after day.Eventually, Micah stopped seeing him as noise.
Kael was all personality, cocky, overly chatty, but deadly in combat. He specialized in infiltration and mid-range assassination, and despite his mouth, he had instincts worth trusting. He was here to learn to protect himself. The next heir to the Ali family. One of the three noble families. His family was led by a god and boasted control of over a quarter of the empire lands under them.
Tonight, Kumo sat on the rooftop, legs hanging over the edge, Ali sat beside him juggling knives into the wind.
"You know," Spencer said, "I used to think you were mute."
Micah said nothing.
Spencer smirked. "Then I saw you slice a guy's throat while telling the instructor he missed a blind spot. Ice cold. I was like, 'Damn, he talks.'"
Micah smiled as he the memory of the ambush upon them on one extraction mission flooded his mind. A small twitch hit the corner of Kumo's mouth. Not quite a smile. "You realise I grew up here as a cleaner after being recruited on good merit. I was too young to be here so they registered me as a cleaner so I could attend all classes unasked. So I could have graduated when I was 16 but that is only when I was enrolled as a proper student. I literally knew everything here then and then you came thinking I was also a freshman like all of you. Truth is I know th moves of every assassin that has trained here in four years time and also that means I have a lot of experience."
Eliya joined them a moment later, her long coat flaring behind her. She didn't say anything. Just sat down beside them, polishing her scope.
The three of them, killers in training, each alone in their way, sat in silence.
And somehow, it was enough.
On their first mission in year one, a live extraction, Spencer had saved Kumo from a collapsing wall trap. He did not gloat about it. Did not expect thanks and that was enough. And that, it earned him Kumo's friendship.
They were not very close but Spencer Ali became one of the few people Micah didn't ignore.
Now, in the third year, Micah was considered a prodigy, not for his power, but for how quietly he worked.No emotional outbursts. No attachments.No mistakes.
Except the visions.
It started months ago, flashes of possible futures. Fire. Screams. A knife. A name. Sometimes he would change one small decision, and everything else would shift.
Sometimes for the better.
Sometimes not. He had once hesitated to kill because of a vision and the target had ended meeting a warlord and he could not risk having to kill in front of a person of a higher tier because that would be like forfeiting his life. He had ended up hiding for a whole week before getting the chance to kill the guy as he was in bed with some whores.