The debrief was a haze: damp uniforms, sharp disinfectant, the bone-cold hunger that crept in after the adrenaline collapsed. The cohort seated in the main hall, field-dressed and slumping, while instructors prowled behind, watching for any evidence that the violence had not been instructional.

Dane stood in the center, eyeing the lot of them as if he too was unsure how many survived the morning whole.

"There are lessons in simulation," Dane intoned, "and lessons you bleed for." He let his gaze rake the benches. "You will remember today, or you'll become a memory yourselves."

He ticked off the points, each with a name:

"Aria, you failed to maintain line after the first contact. You retreated. If you do this again, the world will move up the calendar and make it your funeral."

Aria looked down, face red even under the crust of blood at her cheek.

"Kale," Dane continued, "improvisation only matters if you live to tell the story. Control your variables."

Kale's smile never even flickered, Soren guessed he considered that a compliment.

"The twins." Dane didn't bother naming them. "You are force multipliers. That's not a compliment. Learn to act on orders next time instead of turning the fight into a circus."

The twins high-fived each other under the table. Soren respected the commitment.

"Jannek," Dane said, "you didn't die, which was a surprise to nobody, least of all me. Find better motivation."

At the end, his attention fell on Soren and Cassian. The room followed.

"Vale. Dorelle."

Soren felt the room's eyes converge, waiting for Dane to mete out the insult or, worse, an ambiguous nod.

"You fought like the world was watching," Dane said, unmoved. "It wasn't, but someday it might." He paused, the silence as off-key as the twin's earlier song. "There is only one rule in the field. If you must escalate, end it so no one else can pay the price."

He dismissed them with a flick of the hand.

Nobody cheered or lingered. The cohort leaked out in uneven pairs, peeling for the infirmary or the refectory, maybe to some corner of the dorms where they could rethread their skeletons. Only the twins left together, still bleeding, still smiling.

Soren stood, detouring to the window where the sky glowed with the threat of another storm.

Seren joined him there, arms folded, the knuckles on her left hand still blue from the morning's fight. She stared out at the courtyard, but Soren knew she was measuring him for reaction, the way she always did.

"You ever think," she said, "that maybe the point isn't to be the last one standing, just the first who can walk away from it?"

He liked that, or maybe just the logic behind it. "Wouldn't know. I'm not used to either."

She grinned, then caught herself, then shrugged. "Well, I'm glad you lost. Means I don't have to be the hero next time."

He let her have that. It felt more honest than anything Dane had said in months.

They watched the yard in silence, until the bell tolled and the routine pressed them into new patterns: lunch, review, sleep, and then the next round, as if every lesson was already evaporating before it had a chance to set.

That night, Soren lay flat on his cot, breathing shallow, pain sharpening every time he tried to flex his arm. Through the wall, the twins argued about the best way to cauterize a wound, and Jannek practiced his breathing exercises at a volume that suggested either real terror or the world's finest impression of a defective wind instrument.

Down the hall, the sound of boots-in-motion never quite faded, a warning or a comfort, depending on how fast you wanted the future to arrive.

He replayed the fight over and over, trying to find the gap: the instant where Cassian's momentum overtook his own, the split-second when Soren could have ended it without the extra scar. He didn't regret any of it; what troubled him was how easy it was to imagine doing it again, and harder, if the situation called for it.

He let his hand rest on his chest, feeling the subtle, familiar thrum of the shard beneath. The cold spread outward, quiet and disciplined, a reminder that every containment was just a waiting room for something worse.

The building creaked once, and for a moment he felt Valenna's presence at the edge of his memory, watching, maybe waiting for him to see the lesson for himself.

"Keep it contained," he whispered, and this time she didn't answer.

Outside, the city bells rang the next hour. Soren closed his eyes and tried not to dream.

Three days passed in blur. With both teams still short of full strength, the instructors rotated initiates through lesson after lesson, half the time doubling up on drills just to keep the collective trauma from coagulating. Pain became a background noise, like the hum of the library lights or the friction of pages in the lecture hall.

The old wounds clotted, calcified, and faded; the new ones came in their own time, finding fresh territory.

Cassian didn't challenge him again, not with words. Instead, he watched, neutral, almost bored, each time the instructors paired them for simulation. If anything, the unspoken détente made the fights meaner, each engagement a few millimeters closer to the bone. Soren found he preferred it that way. Honesty in opposition.

Kale kept bricking his knee but learned to laugh around it; the twins perfected new methods of synchronized violence, occasionally even following orders; Jannek, miracle of miracles, started landing hits that didn't look accidental.

Seren, more than anyone, watched the world with an increasing skepticism, as if waiting for the Academy to admit it was not, in fact, about the perfection of its students but rather something else, containment, perhaps, or simply efficient attrition.

Whatever the truth, it didn't change the order of the day. By the end of the week, Soren's squad was on top of the roster, Cassian's only a decimal-point behind. The reward was more drills, more lectures, and a schedule so tight it warped the meaning of exhaustion.

At refectory on the third night, Soren found himself alone for the full duration of the meal, the usual noise and pettiness muted by absence. He watched the dusk settle in through the high glass, the city below flickering like a page of misprinted stars. A bell tolled, distant, each note sinking deep as marrow.

He wondered, not for the first time, if this was the shape of his future: cutting through old scars, outpacing the injury, and hanging on just long enough to see what, if anything, he might do with freedom.

He pushed the tray aside. The cut on his forearm hurt less now, a numbness that might, under the right conditions, pass for healing.

One day more, and the rotation would change. And the next test, he sensed, by the shift in the air, by the increased scrutiny in every instructor's eye, would not be a matter of simulation.

It would be a matter of record.

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