Tier One: Wolves Among Ghosts
> "Survival is not about fairness. It's about knowing who to kill and when to disappear."
— Field Marshal Gaius Rehn
The desert erupted in smoke and screams.
Cadets scattered through the ruins of a derelict mining facility — charred metal corridors, half-buried machinery, and open-wide fields of slaughter that gave no quarter.
Tier One began.
No squads.
No commands.
No restarts.
The order was simple:
Survive. Kill. Progress.
Drones buzzed overhead, recording every moment.
Turrets scoured the zone, firing on motion.
Mechs, reprogrammed with non-lethal but cruel force weapons, manned the outer edge, clearing stragglers.
And running through it all were "ghost units" — elite instructors in stealth suits, deployed to hunt cadets like game.
---
Kale Drayen — Sector Red 4
Kale moved like a ghost through broken scaffolding, his eyes sweeping the floor.
He had chosen elevation — rising into the splintered ribs of a fallen tower. Here, he was able to look out over the patterns. The battles. The runners.
Most of all, he was able to see ahead.
His rifle lay across his lap. Not to be employed — not yet.
He was watching.
Waiting.
Surviving in Tier One was not as much about muscle, but judgment.
You needed to know how to strike and when to shut up.
There was a distant cry, then a hiss as a concussion round was launched from its carrier. Someone had been tagged out.
Kale marked the spot.
"Too loud," he whispered.
Motion suddenly. A cadet — Ironborn — sprinting cross-country, happily none the wiser of the glint to their right.
Kale spotted the flash of the hooded figure stand up.
Ghost unit.
A split second later, the cadet's body jerked, taken out halfway through their sprint.
Out.
Kale exhaled through his nose.
It was proving clarity in combat.
---
Kora Tessan — Sector Blue 1
Kora huddled next to a half-buried skeleton of a drone, blade at the ready.
Her breaths were steady, her heartbeat regulated.
Three Cipher cadets were nearby — whispering, none the wiser that she stood just five meters away.
They were in panic, arguing about whether to go or hide.
She'd already set a sonic trap behind them.
They made the wrong choice.
The instant they shifted to attack, the trap went off — a scream of noise that left them completely stunned.
Kora struck.
Three swift movements.
One throat-thump. One kneecap slash. One solar plexus thrust.
Non-fatal, but enough.
The drone in the sky beeped — three eliminations verified.
She vanished before backup could make it.
Kora did not stalk for survival.
She stalked for dominance.
---
Cassian Dorne — Sector Gold 3
Cassian strode with another brand of arrogance.
He walked proudly, not even trying to be stealthy, flanked by two personally selected Dynast elite.
Strength in numbers. Chop down whatever they could. Overpower with firepower.
They'd already dispatched six cadets.
But Cassian's mind wasn't on the game.
It was on Drayen.
"Find him," he growled.
The other Dynasts exchanged glances.
"What if he's not in this quadrant?"
Cassian growled. "Then we make him come."
They lit a signal flare — a challenge.
It whirled into the orange sky like a gauntlet at God's feet.
---
Ox Varin — Sector Black 7
Ox was surrounded.
Three Vanguard cadets had tagged after him into a warehouse. They thought they could trap him easily.
They were wrong.
Ox didn't run.
He fought.
His fists broke the first cadet's jaw. He bear-hugged the second and smashed them against the wall with a sound like thunder.
The third tried to run.
Ox threw a crate.
Direct hit.
All three drones overhead flashed red: OUT.
Ox wiped blood from his lip and kept going.
He wasn't graceful.
He was a storm.
---
Observation Deck — UNS Vigilant Eye
Vice Admiral Mannerheim watched the feeds in silence.
Behind him, a cluster of instructors and intel officers murmured over stats.
"Eliminations up 18%. Drayen still unspotted. Cassian's squad is creating kill zones. Kora's reached ghost-level efficiency."
Mannerheim smiled.
"Let them tire each other out. Tier One is foreplay."
He clicked the next file.
Tier Two: Nightfall Protocol.
Involuntary nerve suppressors.
Temperature reduction.
Simulated wounds.
Tier One had pushed aggression.
Tier Two would push endurance and suffering.
---
Back in the Wastes
Kale finally moved.
Two hours in, and his quadrant was running low. He climbed down from the tower silently, dropping to a crouch.
He needed to entice someone out. Something more cunning than sheer force.
So he launched a flare of his own.
But not out in the open — hidden beneath wreckage, slanted to suggest desperation.
Then he withdrew.
Thirty seconds later, he saw movement.
Cassian.
So predictable.
Kale moved around to flank him.
Not to kill.
To watch.
To haunt.
Make Cassian think he wasn't the hunter today.
Make him feel the eyes behind the trees.
Kale smiled and vanished into the wreckage.
---
End of Tier One
Half of the cadets were gone by evening.
Ghost units reappeared at base.
Turrets faltered.
A voice spoke the dusty twilight:
"Tier One complete. 89 cadets remain."
"Ready for Tier Two: Nightfall Protocol."
"Rest is a privilege. You will not be given it."
Kale sat on top of a rusty pipe, drinking recycled water.
Kora, silent as air, stood beside him.
Shortly, Ox appeared.
No celebration. No reprieve.
They simply sat in quiet together in the dirt, their faces to the waning light.
Enemies drew close. Dynasts plotted.
The true tempest was rising.
And Kale sensed it.
Behind his eyes.
A war humming in his veins.
Tier Two: Nightfall Protocol
> "You cannot teach men to be brave by showing them only daylight."
— Admiral Thorne Varrick
---
Martian Wastes — Combat Zone Alpha
01:00 Standard Time
No second sun had yet appeared.
The world was dark beyond the night.
Ash drifted like snow, and stars were hidden under manufactured clouds. Temperature subfreezing. Visibility? Less than three meters in some spots.
Tier Two began.
No warning.
No lights.
No sleep.
Cadets were jolted awake by agony surges in their spines — standard-issue nerve-stim implants activating an hour after the conclusion of Tier One. The implants simulated small traumas: muscle strains, broken ribs, hypoxia, disorientation.
They fell to the floor, adrenaline crashing after hours of deployment.
And the terror deepened.
The Nightfall Protocol activated four basic factors:
Environmental suppression
Neurological disruption
Simulated injuries
Shadow incursions
The cadets would be hunted by "shadows" — phantom teachers supplemented with silent combat protocol implants. They hunted in teams. They used shock knives and trauma pulses. They attacked without warning, and only one hit would be enough to be removed from the trials.
---
Kale Drayen — Sector Indigo 2
Kale couldn't see.
Not exactly. Not how ordinary eyes worked.
But he felt.
The nerves in his neck buzzed from the simulation—his body thought his left side was broken. Every step had ghost-pain.
He crouched in silence inside a destroyed cargo hauler. Ice seeped at the fringes of his uniform. Wind howled through gaps in the framework.
His brain was ice.
This is what they wanted—to bare them, not just physically, but also mentally. To remove comfort and reason and put reaction in its place.
Kale did not react.
He watched.
He measured heartbeats.
He tracked wind currents, sound waves, infrared flashes.
He felt the air pressure change when the first shadow entered the building.
---
Cassian Dorne — Sector Crimson 4
Cassian muttered under his breath.
His best Dynast crew—so confident hours ago—numbered two. The third nowhere to be seen. No beacon from the drone. No confirmation. Gone.
"Shadow took him," Brel groaned, blood streaming from his nose.
Cassian's vision blurred. His HUD was disrupted. He jabbed a finger at his own bicep to trigger a counter-pulse, clearing some of the neurological haze.
They needed to rejoin.
But the shadows dogged them like predators.
And worse.
He had never once seen Drayen.
Cassian's pride blazed now, even as cold consumed his bones.
He was not going to be upstaged. Not by some gutter rat.
"Change of plan," he declared. "We coax them out."
"How?" spat Brel.
Cassian smiled.
"We play at being Dynasts."
They scorched six points. Lures. Traps. Noise. Pandemonium.
Let shadows fall.
Let other cadets panic.
Cassian would reign in darkness.
---
Kora Tessan — Sector Obsidian 5
Kora crouched in a mud and steel trench, her breathing just fogging the air.
She didn't wince when the pain simulation went on. She'd already broken bones in life. The simulated pain was background noise.
What disturbed her was the silence.
The kind of silence that howled.
She saw the flicker first—a shadow crossing the edge of the trench.
Three of them.
One went left.
One stayed above.
The third dropped into the pit.
She didn't hesitate.
Kora's boot shot out and hit the shadow in the knee. She rolled, twisted, came to her feet with a dropped blade still in her hand and thrust it for the neck.
The shadow caught it mid-air.
Too fast.
It flung her.
She slammed into the wall. Agony spiked.
But before the shadow could drive the blade home, a proximity mine she'd planted previously blew.
Non-lethal concussive shock.
Enough to rattle even a ghost.
The shadow withdrew. Kora vanished into shadows, lips bleeding.
She left no trail.
---
Ox Varin — Sector Pale 7
Ox moved forward, holding a slab of metal for cover. His simulated wound told him his right leg was broken. He did not care.
Cold bit deep.
He had not sweated in hours.
But something within him would not let go.
He found a dying Cipher cadet. Shivering, injured.
The smart thing was to leave him.
The right thing—
Ox slung the cadet over his shoulder.
He carried him two kilometers into darkness.
When the extraction drone picked up the eliminated cadet, Ox left behind no name. No boast.
He merely vanished back into the darkness.
---
Kale — Stillness
The shadow edged forward, step by calculated step.
It was systematic. Methodical. Kill.
But it was too slow.
Kale's eyes tracked its path. Its cadence. Its breath.
He opened a sound burst to the east.
The shadow twirled.
The fraction of a second, and Kale dropped, swept the legs, and drove a stun baton into its spine.
Contact.
Drone overhead flashed blue.
"Shadow instructor eliminated — bonus awarded."
Kale puffed out air, slow and steady.
Cold had penetrated into his marrow.
But fire simmered behind his eyes.
He knew what was coming.
He welcomed it.
---
Command Deck — UNS Vigilant Eye
Vice Admiral Mannerheim watched the live feed. His hands remained behind his back.
An officer stated: "Only 63 cadets remained."
Another stated: "Drayen just killed a ghost."
There was silence.
The admiral smiled thinly. "Of course he did."
Behind him, one of the Academy's most experienced trainers, Colonel Rensha, spoke with a faint edge of concern.
"He's becoming too good."
Mannerheim didn't blink. "That's the point."
"But the Dynasts—"
"Will have to learn to adapt or fall behind."
---
End of Tier Two
A cold wind howled across the Martian plain.
Flares rose to announce the end of the second tier.
"Tier Two complete. 63 cadets remaining."
"Final Tier will begin at 06:00."
"There are no breaks."
Kale sat amidst the ruins of a fallen dome, wrapping a thermal strip around his arms.
Kora found him again.
Ox followed soon enough.
They didn't speak.
They didn't need to.
The next tier would shatter bodies.
It would pit cadet against cadet.
Allies would turn against. Rivals would strike.
The Top Level was blood, blood, blood.
And Kale…
Kale was already sharpening his mind.
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