The briefing room was cold that morning.
Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting sterile shadows across the metal table where maps of Leide's western border were laid out. The region was marked with red sigils — daemon activity.
Cor Leonis stood at the head of the table, arms crossed. "A scouting post went silent two days ago. No response to hails. No trace of transmission. The Guard suspects a daemon breach."
Around the table sat the young candidates — Sirius, Kael, Rhea, and five others whose faces were sharp with focus but still too new to wear scars.
Cor's eyes swept across them. "This isn't a training simulation. You're being sent to observe, confirm, and extract survivors if possible. Avoid combat unless necessary."
Rhea raised an eyebrow. "Define 'necessary.'"
Cor's tone didn't waver. "If it's breathing and not human."
Zangan leaned against the wall, chewing on a toothpick. "You kids will do fine. Just don't play hero."
Sirius glanced at him. "You don't think we're ready?"
Zangan shrugged. "Readiness doesn't matter when the world stops playing fair."
Cor's gaze met Sirius'. "Move fast. Stay quiet. Don't underestimate what's out there."
---
The journey took half a day by armored carrier.
Leide's landscape stretched barren and wide — endless sand, rusted ruins, and shattered magitek from forgotten wars.
The convoy stopped at the ridge overlooking the outpost.
Kael adjusted his visor. "Looks empty."
Rhea peered through her scope. "No movement. No heat signatures either."
Sirius narrowed his eyes. The air felt wrong. Too still. Too heavy.
Cor's voice came through the comm. "Candidates, proceed in pairs. Maintain radio silence unless compromised."
"Copy," Sirius said.
He moved with Kael, while Rhea took the second team to flank east. The others followed, spreading into formation.
The outpost lay quiet beneath the setting sun — a few modular shelters, a comms tower half-collapsed, and black scorch marks on the sand.
Sirius knelt, brushing his fingers across the ground. The soot was still warm.
"Whatever happened," he murmured, "it was recent."
Kael looked around warily. "Then where's the fight?"
The wind answered with silence.
---
They advanced slowly. Sirius' senses stretched outward — every shift of air, every vibration in the ground. The quiet was absolute.
Too absolute.
He whispered, "Something's here."
Kael froze. "Where?"
Sirius didn't answer — he was already moving, shoving Kael aside as the ground erupted.
A daemon burst upward from the sand — its body a mass of sinew and crystal, its form vaguely humanoid but twisted. The air crackled with heat and corruption.
"Contact!" Kael shouted.
The other teams responded instantly, forming a perimeter.
"Type?" Rhea's voice came through the comm.
Sirius rolled to his feet, drawing his katana. "Unknown. Big."
The daemon lunged — claws carving through air like molten glass. Sirius deflected the strike, sparks flaring where steel met flesh. The creature hissed, recoiling.
Kael moved in from the side, blade biting deep into its ribs. Black ichor splattered across the sand.
"Move!" Sirius shouted.
Rhea's team opened fire from the ridge, but the daemon barely flinched. It turned, roaring, and slammed its arm into the ground. The shockwave threw two candidates off their feet.
"Hold formation!" Sirius yelled, sliding between strikes.
But then another roar split the air — deeper, closer.
A second daemon emerged from the wreckage of the comms tower.
"Two!" Rhea cursed. "Of course there's two!"
Sirius' heartbeat steadied even as adrenaline surged. "Kael, left! I'll take the first!"
He vanished — Shadow Stealth kicking in. The daemon hesitated, confused. In that breath of uncertainty, Sirius appeared beneath it, blade slicing upward in a perfect arc.
The creature shrieked, stumbling back, ichor spraying in ribbons of smoke.
But there were too many variables, too many moving parts.
A scream broke through the comms.
---
"Unit Three, report!" Cor's voice crackled through the channel.
No answer.
Rhea turned — and froze.
One of the younger candidates, Taren, barely sixteen, was on the ground. A daemon's claw had impaled him clean through the chest. His weapon lay half-buried in the sand.
Time slowed.
Sirius saw Rhea start to move — saw the panic flood her face — and in that instant, something cold and mechanical took over.
He blurred forward, faster than thought. The katana cut through the daemon's arm, black blood erupting in a jet.
Rhea fell to her knees beside Taren as the creature recoiled, screeching.
Sirius struck again — once, twice, a third time — until the daemon collapsed into ash.
The world snapped back into motion.
"Medic!" Kael shouted.
Sirius knelt beside them. His eyes flicked to the wound — too deep, too severe. The boy's eyes were glassy, chest barely moving.
Rhea pressed down on the wound anyway, trembling. "He's still breathing, he's still—"
Sirius put a hand over hers. "He's gone."
Her head shook violently. "No. No, he's—"
But there was no heartbeat. No warmth.
Just silence.
---
The aftermath blurred together.
Cor's reinforcements arrived within minutes — fast, efficient, silent. The daemons were purged, the site cleansed.
But the silence after was worse than the battle.
Sirius stood apart from the group, staring at the stretch of sand where the boy had fallen. The faint burn marks still glowed where daemon ichor had eaten into the ground.
Rhea sat nearby, her face pale, hands shaking despite herself. Kael stood beside her, silent, jaw tight.
Cor approached, his presence heavy. "You did what you could."
Sirius didn't look at him. "We failed."
Cor's tone was even. "We lost one. We saved six. That's not failure."
"It feels like it," Sirius said softly.
Cor studied him for a moment. "It should."
He placed a hand on Sirius' shoulder — a rare gesture of comfort from the Immortal. "If death ever stops feeling like this, you've already lost more than you think."
Sirius nodded faintly.
Behind them, Rhea's quiet sobs carried in the wind.
---
When they returned to Insomnia, the debrief was short.
Taren's file was sealed. His name would not be recorded in public archives — only in the hidden rolls of the Guard.
"Protect unseen," Cor said quietly as the report closed.
"Bleed without witness," Sirius finished, voice low.
The creed had never felt heavier.
---
That night, Sirius sat alone in his room, staring at the reflection of his blade under lamplight. His hands were steady. His chest was not.
He whispered, "He was younger than me."
The silence answered.
He remembered the brief flicker of fear in the boy's eyes before the daemon struck — the same fear he'd felt in his first fight years ago.
He clenched his fists. "I was supposed to protect them."
For the first time since joining the Candidate Corps, Sirius didn't feel like the White Wolf. He felt human — breakable, small.
Outside, the rain began again, soft and steady.
He let it fall, the sound filling the cracks where words failed.
---
Later, when Lyla found him still awake, she didn't ask. She simply sat beside him, resting her hand over his.
He didn't speak. Neither did she.
The silence between them was the only comfort he could accept.