The morning of the containment run was the kind of cold that found every seam in Soren's uniform and made a home there. The muster ground was a rectangle of blued flagstone, rimed in salt and black moss. Soren flexed his fingers to check for nerve return, then let his hands fall still at his sides.

Cassian stood at the head of Blue Company, perfectly angled, not a speck of lint on him, so obvious it might have been a provocation.

Dane didn't speak until the line was silent enough for breath to echo. His armor was only half buckled, and his eyes held that cure-all for insomnia called "too many hours." He paced the length once, boots smearing the frost, baton tapping his thigh in loose syncopation.

"You'll run Edge Hollow again," he said. "Live steel. No guards, no visors. Medical is pre-staffed. Objective: breach and hold the center for thirty heartbeats." He let the instructions rest like an iron on the row of shivering spines.

Cassian's smile was engineered for the benefit of everyone except Soren.

He called the squads. Soren was Gray lead, same as last cycle. Kale at his left, Seren on anchor, twins like opposing facets of the same weapon, and Jannek, border-province, hair sharp as a paintbrush, eyes always half-wet with nerves, filling the slot nobody wanted.

Cassian drafted his blueblood inner circle: Aria, three senior duelists, and his own sub-lieutenant Dorelle, who had hands like cages and a face that looked midway between adolescence and a court portrait.

"Orders are simple," Dane said. "No improvising the rules." Both Soren and Cassian got the look. "No mercy, but no escalation. Get through the round. Survive it."

He dismissed them. Ten minutes to organize, then gear.

Kale clapped Soren's shoulder with a hand that felt like a bag of knuckle bones. "Going for glory this time, Vale?"

Soren shook his head. "Going for not getting my face rearranged." He caught Seren's gaze, and she arched a brow, the only evidence she'd heard. The twins conferred in a language of shrugs and micro-expressions, then slouched off to the far end of the armory.

"It's a trap," Jannek whispered, voice just above the threshold of audibility. "Dane wants to see if we'll break formation." He scrubbed his hands together, eyes flickering from Soren to the horizon and back, as if expecting to see a judge there.

Soren shrugged. "So we don't. We let them break first." He stabbed a finger toward the twins, who were busy wrapping their hilts in resin cloth. "You're primary. Kale's support. Seren and I will orbit until we see their move."

Jannek paled, but didn't argue.

He hated the way the team looked at him before these runs. Nobody said it, but everybody agreed: Soren was the variable. Sometimes he threaded the theory, sometimes he slipped it, and nobody, least of all Soren, knew which would show up on a given morning.

Cassian's team stretched and preened on the opposite wall, trading jokes with a speed that felt like watching predators clean their own fangs.

The sun came up in layers, seeping orange into the stone. Soren flexed his wrist, felt the tightness where the old break threatened to remind him how mortal he was. The shard under his skin pulsed a slow, private rhythm.

The armory was a racket of boot scrape and the powdery thunk of chalked blades smacking against the racks. Soren stared at his practice sword for a long breath.

The last time he'd fought Cassian at Edge Hollow, they'd both walked away with matching scars, as if Dane had a template and used it to correct for symmetry.

He gripped the weapon, tested the balance, then followed the team to the starting arch. Ahead, the field blurred: fog, wind, the shifting current of a hundred rumors about what this exercise was really meant to prove.

The march to Edge Hollow was not a march. It was a forced truce between the squads, each moving in a tight coil, barely bothering to hide the way they kept each other in peripheral vision.

The trail was a mess. Last night's rain had turned the low ground to paste, and the path cut through it left a record of every misstep.

Nobody talked.

Past the copse of frost-burned birches, the ruin resolved out of the fog: Edge Hollow, four nailed arches and a black reflection pool at the center, like a pupil staring skyward.

Dane and two instructors waited at the entrance. No ceremony. Just a nod.

"Blue Company: west ingress. Gray: east."

Soren spat into the grass, signaled a loose wedge, and waited for the bell. When it rang, the only sound was the scream of cold iron from the Blue side as Cassian's team launched itself into the ruined nave.

The first thirty seconds were chaos. Cassian's style was brute geometry, commit, lock, and muscle the opponent into advantage. He sent Aria down the right, Dorelle up the left, his own advance dead center. The rest flared out, agitating the perimeter and looking for weak meat.

Soren ignored the advance. He kept his team back, letting the Blue push into the open. He was counting on overreach, and Cassian never let him down.

The twins clashed with Aria, parried then disengaged, looping her out of formation and straight into Seren's path. Seren finished a quick lock, then gave Soren the go signal.

Jannek, sweating already, hovered in the gap between lines. Soren saw what would happen before it did: Dorelle, reading the play, peeled off and tried for the inside route, looking to cut the head off the Gray vanguard.

Soren let him. He motioned Jannek forward, kept pace just behind. Dorelle was fast. Soren had to admit, for a second, that the other boy's training bordered on art.

He waited for Jannek to panic and commit, then took the opening that Dorelle's obvious contempt created: a feint, then a rush, then a clash of steel on steel so loud it made Soren's teeth rattle.

Dorelle didn't feel like a person in the fight, he felt like a machine. Every motion pre-optimized, every guard tested and recalibrated for the next cycle. Soren let Dorelle dominate the rhythm just enough for the twins to circle and trap him on the third beat.

"Now!" Soren barked, and Jannek didn't hesitate. He ducked under both swords and drove the point of his own blade into Dorelle's thigh. Not deep, rules were rules, but enough to take Dorelle out of play for the round.

First blood, Gray.

From the far side, Soren saw Cassian react: a flash of side-eye, an adjustment in stance, a recalibrated charge. Soren felt the old, stupid thrill that came with being noticed, then tamped it down. He swept the field for the next variable.

Aria was down. Seren held her, disarmed, in a figure-four lock. The twins, now free, fanned to the center. Soren moved to intercept Cassian.

Cassian met him at the edge of the reflection pool, where the grass slicked out and the light was weird, half in, half not. He wore the smile Soren had expected, but the eyes were feral.

"You're making this tedious," Cassian said.

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