Three days into training with 3G, Kumo was summoned to Darrien's office — not the gym, not the training yard. The office meant paperwork. Paperwork meant something official.
"Sit," Darrien said, not looking up from the folder in front of him.
Kumo sat. He didn't ask. Darrien would get there.
"You're being pulled off solo work for a week. Escort assignment." Darrien finally looked up. "Three-man team. You, Spencer, Elina."
That got Kumo's attention. Team assignments were rare enough on their own — the three of them together, rarer still. Rockville liked its trainees isolated, competitive, easy to compare against each other. Sharing a mission meant someone above Darrien's pay grade had asked for it specifically.
"Who's the package?"
"Master Sin." Darrien slid the folder across the desk. "Alchemist. Poison specialist — arguably the best in the Empire outside the guild circuits, which is exactly why half the guild circuits want him dead or owned. He's been summoned to consult with the Institute on antidote work, and someone decided the road between here and the consultation site needed live cover, not just wards."
Kumo opened the folder. A thin file — alchemist's credentials, a travel route through the forest belt northeast of SkillHill, nothing that screamed danger on paper.
"Three assassin trainees for one alchemist," Kumo said. "Feels like overkill for a milk run."
"It's not overkill. It's insurance." Darrien's voice dropped, just slightly — not quite a warning, but close. "Sin's made enemies with every poison he's ever brewed a cure for. If someone wanted him gone, or wanted him for themselves, the forest is where they'd try it. Cover's thin out there. Sensors are worse."
"And you're sending three novices instead of a Grandmaster escort."
"I'm sending three of the best novices this Institute has ever produced," Darrien said. "That's not modesty talking. It's the only reason I signed off on it."
Kumo closed the folder. He didn't love it — not the assignment itself, but the shape of it. Too clean. Too convenient a lineup of exactly the people worth targeting if someone wanted to hurt the Institute in one move: the heir to House Ali, the Empire's only mana-channeling marksman, and whatever Kumo himself was quietly becoming, if 3G's reactions this past week were anything to go by.
But it wasn't his place to refuse an assignment. Not yet, not when refusing meant questions he didn't have answers for.
"When do we leave?"
"Dawn, tomorrow." Darrien stood, signaling the meeting was over. "Pack light. Sin travels slow — old habit, from a man who's outlived every poison meant for him. You'll be on the road three days each way."
---
Elina and Spencer were already waiting on the rooftop when Kumo arrived that night, the same spot they always met, the same hour, though tonight neither of them looked like they were in the mood for the usual routine.
"You heard," Kumo said, more statement than question.
"Darrien pulled me an hour after you, I'd guess," Spencer said. He wasn't juggling knives tonight. His hands sat still in his lap, which was, for Spencer, its own kind of tell. "First time in three years they've bothered pairing the three of us. Feels less like an honor and more like someone's testing something."
"Testing what?" Elina asked. She had her rifle across her knees, already half-disassembled, like she needed something to do with her hands.
"I don't know," Spencer admitted. "But my aunt didn't mention this. If it were a House Ali matter, she'd have told me herself before Darrien ever got the paperwork. Which means this came from somewhere above her."
Kumo watched him for a moment. Spencer rarely admitted to not knowing something — it wasn't pride, exactly, more that he usually did know, three moves ahead of everyone else in the room. Seeing him actually uncertain sat wrong.
"Three days out, three days back," Kumo said. "Forest belt. Thin cover."
"I don't like escort work," Elina said quietly. She wasn't looking at either of them, focused instead on the rifle in her hands. "Give me a rooftop and a mile of open air, I'll keep anyone alive. Put me in trees with no sightlines and a target who insists on walking instead of riding, and I'm just another body that can get flanked."
Neither of the boys said anything to that. It was true, and all three of them knew it.
"We'll manage," Spencer said finally, though it came out lighter than he clearly meant it. "We always do."
Kumo said nothing. Somewhere under his ribs, faint and wordless, his sixth sense had started to itch — not the sharp, directed pull of killing intent aimed at him, but something duller. Distant. Like weather changing three days out, too far off yet to name.
He didn't mention it. There was nothing yet to mention. Just a feeling, and feelings weren't proof of anything.
Not yet.