The room had been pitch black for what felt like centuries.
I sat on the cold stone floor, my back pressed hard against the edge of the mahogany bedframe, my knees pulled tightly to my chest. The heavy velvet curtains were drawn shut, strangling even the moonlight. I needed the dark. I needed the sensory deprivation, because every time I closed my eyes, the overwhelming stench of damp fur, rusted iron, and fresh copper flooded my nostrils. I could still see her face, her last breaths looking at the floor.
My mind—the battle-hardened consciousness of a thirty-year-old soldier who had commanded squads and watched good men die in the mud—was working frantically to catalogue what happened in those sewers. It was trying to compartmentalise the trauma. Threat neutralised. Acceptable casualties. Mission parameters achieved. The logic was cold, efficient, and strategically sound. Elara had broken formation. She had let emotion dictate her blade. In war, that was a fatal error.
But my body wasn’t listening to the logic. And also I think my mind.
My fourteen-year-old nervous system was in total, catastrophic rebellion. My hands were shaking so violently I had to interlock my fingers just to keep them still. My breathing was shallow and ragged, tearing at my throat. The stitched gash across my right cheek burned with a venomous, pulsing heat, a physical brand marking my failure as a squad leader. In my past life, I had built walls of ice around my heart to survive the horrors of the battlefield. But the Ember inside me, the biological furnace I had awakened, had amplified everything. It didn’t just enhance my muscles; it made the cold, hollow ache in my chest feel infinite. I could not suppress my feelings anymore; they demanded to burn to be free.
I had treated two innocent, traumatised girls as expendable assets. I had calculated their usefulness. And one of them had bled out on a pile of rotting rodents because of my absolute arrogance.
A heavy, deliberate knock echoed through the thick oak door of my chambers.
The sound made me flinch, my muscles tensing on instinct.
"Elvit."
The voice was muffled through the heavy wood, but I recognized it instantly. It was Miklas. However, the sharp, commanding edge of the 7th Legion Captain was entirely absent. There was no military bark, no aristocratic authority. He just sounded incredibly tired.
"I am coming in," he said, the brass handle rattling slightly.
"Leave me alone," I rasped. My voice sounded alien, cracked and hoarse from crying hours ago.
I had thrown the heavy iron bolt the moment the medics had finished stitching my face. I heard Miklas pause. A heavy sigh seeped through the cracks of the door, followed immediately by the metallic clanking of steel plates and leather. He didn’t try to kick the door down. Instead, the noises indicated he was sliding down the wall, sitting on the floor in the corridor, mirroring my position on the other side of the wood.
"You made a mistake," Miklas began, his voice low and steady, vibrating through the oak. "A terrible, arrogant mistake. You thought you could control the absolute chaos of combat. You thought your strength made you immune to the variables in the dark. Getting that much power can get you intoxicated, real fast."
I squeezed my eyes shut, burying my face in my knees. Every word was a hammer striking an anvil.
"But you are also just a child, Elvit," Miklas continued, the sternness in his tone melting into a deep, resonant warmth. "You carry a burden no recruit should ever have to hold. The crystal showed us your potential, and we instantly thrust the weight of the Empire onto your shoulders. I am your commanding officer, yes. But the moment you pulled me out of that mud in Oakhaven, the moment you sat at my table, I became your father."
A single tear broke free, tracing a burning path down my uninjured cheek.
"I am not going to let you drown in this guilt in the dark," he whispered, pressing his hand against the door. I could hear the leather of his glove creaking against the wood. "I have lost more men than I can count. I know the silence you are hearing right now. The ghosts. But you do not have to fight them alone. Whenever you are ready to breathe again... I am right here."
"I also was once like you reckless, training to achieve everything alone, and I paid the price for that, i like to think I have leart my lesson during that dump night, everyone has lesson to learn from the gods and the fate, it is our role as human to acknowledge them, stand up and continue to walk forward no matter how much bruised or broken we are because this is what we are, and indomabile fire that will not extinguish."
The icy, pragmatic walls I had built around my mind violently shattered.
The tactical soldier faded, leaving only a broken, exhausted girl. I pushed myself up from the cold stone, my legs trembling so badly I almost fell. I stumbled to the door, my bloody fingers fumbling with the heavy iron bolt. With a loud clack, I pulled it back.
The heavy oak swung open. The dim light of the corridor oil lamps spilled into the room, blinding me momentarily. Miklas was already on his feet. He had discarded his heavy pauldrons and sword, wearing only his padded gambeson. He looked down at me, his amber eyes filled with such raw, unfiltered parental grief that it broke whatever restraint I had left.
I collapsed forward. Miklas caught me effortlessly, dropping to one knee and wrapping his massive, scarred arms around me. He pulled me against his chest, burying his face in my dark hair as I finally broke down, sobbing uncontrollably into his tunic. He didn’t offer empty platitudes. He didn’t tell me it was going to be alright. He just held me, an unbreakable anchor in a world that had suddenly lost its gravity.
It was long past midnight when I finally pulled myself together.
I washed the dried tears from my face in the porcelain basin, ignoring the grotesque, stitched reflection staring back at me in the mirror. I strapped my Veriti knife to my thigh—a habit I refused to break—and walked out into the silent, heavily carpeted hallways of the mansion.
I needed to see Myra.
The door to her assigned quarters was slightly ajar, spilling a thin sliver of candlelight onto the floorboards. I pushed it open silently.
The room was lavish, a stark contrast to the poverty she had known her entire life. But Myra wasn’t sleeping in the silk-sheeted bed. She was standing perfectly still by the large glass window, staring out at the moonlit training grounds below.
The transformation in her posture was chilling. Just hours ago, she had been a hyperventilating, terrified child covered in her friend’s blood. Now, she stood rigidly straight. Her hands were clasped firmly behind her back in a flawless military rest position. The trembling was completely gone.
"Myra," I started softly, my voice barely above a whisper.
"It was my fault," she interrupted.
Her voice sent a shiver down my spine. It was eerily flat, devoid of any inflection, grief, or anger. It sounded exactly like Commander Erula.
She didn’t turn around to face me. She just kept staring at the empty courtyard. "You wanted to go alone on reconnaissance. You gave an order. Elara and I... we were arrogant. We forced you to take us into an environment we didn’t understand. My weakness, my inability to hold the line, got her killed."
"No," I stepped into the room, shaking my head. "I was the squad leader. I had the authority. The failure is mine."
Myra finally turned.
I stopped dead in my tracks. The innocence, the gentle fear that had always resided in her wide eyes, was entirely dead. It had been removed and replaced by a cold, hardened void. She looked at me not as a friend, but as a peer assessing a battlefield.
"It does not matter who holds the blame," Myra said softly, stepping into the candlelight. "What matters is the result. We were weak. The nobles in this city treated us like defective tools, and because we lacked the power to defy them, Elara bled out in the dark." She paused, her jaw tightening by a fraction of a millimeter. "It will not happen again, Elvit. I will never be powerless again."
I saw the grim resolution in her face. "Remember that with me you will always be able to fall; I will support you ... always", I said softly while closing the door behind me.
Two days later, the stifling, oppressive atmosphere of Shepfold was finally behind me.
The heavy iron gates of the 7th Legion keep stood wide open, framing the pale, overcast morning sky. I stood in the center of the massive, muddy courtyard, the cold autumn wind biting at my cloak.
The sheer logistical scale of the Empire was on full display. Before me stood the newly formed 5th Cohort. Four hundred and eighty men and women stood in flawless, rigid formation. They were not fully fledged Knight-Mages, but freshly awakened Dormant Buds. Their internal Embers were just strong enough to fortify their muscles and accelerate their healing, making them the ultimate heavy infantry.
Their boiled leather armor gleamed uniformly under the dawn light. The smell of oiled leather, horse sweat, and wet iron filled the air. Supply wagons loaded with grain, arrows, and medical supplies were lined up near the rear, flanked by outriders on heavy warhorses.
Just a few days ago, I would have looked at this army and seen a spreadsheet of assets. Now, looking at the young faces of the recruits gripping their steel-tipped spears, I saw four hundred and eighty lives that could be snuffed out in the dark because of a bad command. The weight of leadership Erula had spoken of was a physical pressure on my chest.
Miklas stood at the head of the column, fully armored in his reinforced steel plating, his white cape snapping in the wind. He looked every bit the legendary Knight-Mage that the frontier feared.
I tightened the straps of my travel pack and turned my head toward the keep. We were leaving for Trivi, the fortified city on the edge of the rural district, to fight a physical war. But I wasn’t leaving with my squad.
Standing on the high stone steps of the keep, looking down at the courtyard, was Commander Erula Fion Buros. Her blazing red eyes swept over the army with calculating approval. And standing exactly one step behind her, mirroring her rigid, emotionless posture, was Myra.
She wore the dark, tailored tunic reserved for the Commander’s personal wards. I broke formation for a brief moment, walking a few steps toward the base of the stairs to meet her gaze.
"Are you sure about this?" I asked, my voice carrying over the low hum of the restless army.
Myra looked down at me, her expression a mask of pale marble. "You and the Captain are going to Trivi to fight barbarians on a physical front, Elvit. But the rot that killed Elara came from inside these walls. The blood magic, the desperate nobility, the auction blocks... that is the real war."
She briefly glanced at Erula’s armored back. "If I want to ensure I am never treated as prey again, I need to learn how real power is wielded in the Empire. I need to learn from the monster who commands it."
The terrifying conviction in her voice solidified my realization. Our paths had violently diverged. I was going to the mud and the blood to learn how to lead armies. She was staying in the viper’s nest to learn how to rule them.
I gave her a single, crisp military salute. "Survive, Myra."
"You too, Elvit."
I turned my back on the stone steps, the heavy political shadows of Shepfold falling away as I walked into the mud of the courtyard. I took my position at the front of the vanguard, right beside Miklas.
The Captain drew his massive broadsword, raising the steel high into the cold air so the entire cohort could see it.
"Mount up!" Miklas’s roar shattered the morning silence, echoing off the high stone walls with earth-shattering authority. "We march for Trivi!"
Four hundred and eighty spears struck the cobblestone in unison, a thunderous heartbeat of war. The gates beckoned, and the long, bloody road to the frontier awaited.