The candidates stood in a loose, uneasy crowd in front of the wooden platform. Cassian looked around and felt a small jolt of surprise there were more of them than he’d expected, dozens at least, some barely past the new minimum age, others already broad through the shoulders and carrying themselves like they’d been waiting years for this exact morning. A few whispered to each other in tight clusters. Most just stared up at the old man on the platform and waited.
"Now then," the examiner said, his voice pitched to reach the edges of the square without shouting. "Let me explain the rules."
He held up one hand and began counting off on his fingers.
"There are three stages. Each has a different task. You will work in groups of three. If you cannot find a group, you are disqualified. If even one member of your group can no longer continue, the entire group is disqualified. If you kill another candidate, you are disqualified. If you leave the exam area, you are disqualified."
Cassian’s fist tightened at his side. He knew he wasn’t the smartest person standing in this crowd, and he definitely wasn’t the strongest. But something solid sat in his chest anyway. Zayd stood on his right. Aurelia stood on his left. With the two of them there, the fear stayed small enough to manage.
"The first test is simple," the old man went on. "Run to the yellow tree on the north side of the woods. You have one hour. That’s all for now."
A low murmur rippled through the crowd at once. Candidates traded tight, unhappy looks. A few took a visible step backward. Two or three simply turned and walked away without a word to anyone.
The north side of the forest wasn’t the west the west was the true killing ground, the place even the Hunters avoided unless they had no other choice but it was still far worse than the quiet trails to the south and east. Most of the beasts that troubled the village made their homes there. Even Cassian, who’d spent six months slipping into these trees on his own, had never once gone that deep alone.
"This is supposed to be the simple test?" he muttered.
Zayd glanced sideways at him. "Sounds like someone’s already scared."
Aurelia let out a small, nervous laugh despite herself.
The examiner raised his arm high overhead.
"LET THE HUNTER SELECTION BEGIN!"
The heavy gates on the north side of the square groaned open on old hinges. Beyond them the forest waited, darker and denser than any of the candidates standing there had quite braced themselves for. Shadow pooled between the trunks even though the sun still sat high overhead. Some children hesitated right at the threshold. Others pushed forward without a second thought and vanished into the trees at once.
Cassian didn’t wait. He broke into a run.
"W-wait!"
Aurelia’s voice pulled him up short. He turned back.
"What? Why? We’re already committed don’t tell me you’re backing out."
"I want to do it," she said, eyes fixed on the dark line of trunks ahead. "It’s just it’s scary."
He looked at her a moment. The fear sat plain on her face, and he felt the same fear pressing against his own ribs, though he kept his voice steady when he answered.
"I’m scared too."
Her eyes widened slightly. "You are?"
He nodded. "Yeah. But if we turn around now, we’ve already failed we just get to pretend we didn’t."
Zayd stared into the treeline and gave one short nod. "He’s right."
Aurelia drew a slow breath, held it, let it go. "I know. I just I don’t want anything happening to either of you."
Cassian met her eyes. "Nothing’s going to happen." He managed something close to a real smile. "I’ll protect you. Both of you."
Color rose in her cheeks. "...Thank you," she said, so quiet he almost missed it.
Zayd watched the two of them for a second longer than the moment strictly needed, then said, "We should move, before the hour starts without us."
Cassian nodded. The three of them stepped past the open gates together and into the shadow of the trees. Behind them, the last sounds of the square the remaining chatter, the examiner calling the next instructions to a fresh knot of candidates faded away until only the forest’s own quiet remained, thick and close, pressing in from every side.
None of them looked back. If they had, they might have noticed the tall, dark-haired stranger from the square standing near the gate long after the last candidate had disappeared, watching the tree line the way a man watches something he already knows the ending to.
Moros stood near the edge of the square, eyes fixed on the dark gap in the trees where the children had disappeared. He hadn’t moved in several minutes. He wasn’t sure he could.
Vogel came up behind him, the old scar across his body half-hidden under the loose folds of his coat, the way it always was, the way Moros suspected he’d arranged it on purpose years ago and never stopped.
"So. Moros."
Moros turned.
"You let your son take the Selection."
He exhaled slowly through his nose. "He wouldn’t have listened no matter what I told him. You know how he is. Once Cassian decides he wants something, he doesn’t stop until someone physically drags him away from it."
Vogel’s mouth curved, faint and tired. "Sounds familiar."
Moros gave him a flat look. "You’ve known me too long to say that with a straight face."
"Long enough to remember exactly what you were like before this village. You were never good at listening either."
Moros’s gaze drifted back toward the treeline. "That was a different man."
The smile dropped from Vogel’s face entirely. "Maybe. But the people coming for this village won’t care how much time has passed."
Moros’s expression hardened. "You’re certain they’re coming."
"I wouldn’t have pushed the age down five years and called the Selection early if I weren’t." Vogel’s jaw tightened at the memory of that decision. "Sixteen has been the minimum age ever since the village was build,Moros. I know exactly what it cost me to stand in that square and tell parents their eleven-year-olds could take the exam this year instead. I did it anyway, because sixteen fighters trained and ready wouldn’t be enough if these people come, and eleven-year-olds who’ve at least learned to use whatever they were born with are better than nothing standing between this village and the trees."
"You lowered it that far on a guess."
"I lowered it that far because waiting five more years for a proper generation of Hunters isn’t a guess anyone gets to make when the alternative is burying children instead of training them." Vogel stepped closer, lowering his voice though there was no one left nearby to hear it. "We don’t know the hour. We don’t know the numbers. But if they reach this village while half of it is standing here watching children run into the woods, there won’t be time to do anything but bury people."
Moros’s hand closed into a fist. "Then prepare the Hunters."
Vogel studied him for a long moment. "You know exactly what you’re asking me to do."
"I do."
"They’re Hunters, Moros. Trained to track beasts, to keep travelers alive on the roads not to stand in a line against an organized force. Half of them have never raised a hand against another person in their lives."
Moros said nothing.
"You’re asking children who came here today hoping for nothing more than a license," Vogel went on, quieter now, "to stand between this village and people who may have come here to burn it to the ground."
Moros lowered his head. "I know precisely what I’m asking of them." His voice softened, just slightly, just enough. "I hate every part of it."
"But?"
He lifted his eyes to the forest again. "But if we don’t use every person capable of lifting a hand, then what we wait for them to reach our doors? Wait until they start on the people who can’t defend themselves at all?"
Vogel didn’t answer that. Moros kept going, the words coming faster now, like something dammed too long.
"I don’t want Cassian anywhere near what’s coming. I don’t want any of those children within a mile of it. But we don’t get to choose who’s left standing when it starts."
A long silence settled between them. Vogel’s eyes dropped, almost without meaning to, to the old scar cutting across his own body.
"After this," he said, touching it lightly with two fingers, "I told myself I was finished with all of it."
"You nearly died that day."
"You should have left the rebellion long before I did."
Vogel’s smile came back, thin and humorless this time. "And you should have left even earlier than that."
Moros didn’t answer. Vogel pressed his fingers against the scar a moment longer, as if testing whether it still remembered how to hurt.
"I remember that day clearly," he said. "The blood. Thinking I was going to die for a cause I’d already stopped believing in completely, somewhere along the way, without ever noticing the exact moment it happened." He paused. "After I lived through it, I couldn’t look at the rebellion the same way again."
"You weren’t the only one," Moros said, looking away.
"No." Vogel’s eyes stayed fixed on him. "But you were the one who kept going after the rest of us stopped."
Moros’s jaw tightened. "I had my reasons."
"You always did." Vogel’s voice dropped, softer now, almost gentle. "And then you came here."
Moros nodded once, slow. "After his mother died, I couldn’t keep him around the people and the places still tied to my old life."
Vogel lowered his eyes at that. "I remember her."
Moros said nothing.
"She wanted him to have something normal."
"That was all either of us ever wanted."
Vogel looked back up. "So you ran."
"I left."
"You disappeared."
"I protected my son."
Vogel didn’t push against that. After a moment he only said, quietly, "Maybe you did."
Moros turned to face him fully. "But don’t make the mistake of thinking your past ever forgot about you, Vogel. Or mine."
Something shifted in Vogel’s eyes the warmth draining out of them all at once, leaving something colder behind.
"You know," he said, "sometimes I wonder if the man standing in front of me is really still Moros at all." His voice had gone flat. "Don’t," he added, before Moros could speak, and then kept talking anyway. "The black hair. The way the shadows sit around you now, even in daylight. Those eyes." Moros’s gaze slid sideways toward him. "That spiral eye of yours was once feared across three kingdoms, and you want me to believe you buried it here, chopping firewood and settling arguments over fish prices."
Moros’s hand curled into a fist. "Vogel."
"I remember what they used to call you."
"Enough."
Vogel held his stare anyway. "You may have buried the name. You may have spent eleven years pretending to be nothing more than a village chief with a temper." He drew a slow breath. "But I was there, Moros even if the rest of the world let itself forget. I saw exactly what you were capable of."
Moros stepped in closer, voice low and hard. "And I saw what the rebellion turned you into, before the end."
Vogel didn’t step back from that either. "Then don’t make me remember it."
He held Moros’s gaze a moment longer, and then the anger went out of his face all at once, replaced by something sadder and far more tired. "You’re still protecting him. After everything."
"Until the day I die."
Vogel turned his eyes toward the dark line of the forest, toward the gap the children had disappeared into. "That’s exactly why I never expected anything less," he said, "from the man they once called"
Moros’s eyes narrowed.
Vogel looked back at him one last time.
"the Shadow Sovereign."
For a long moment, neither of them said anything else. Somewhere beyond the treeline, faint and distant, a bird startled up out of the canopy and didn’t come back down. Moros watched the spot where it had gone, and did not correct him.