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Chapter 18 - The Veil of Thorns — Chapter 18: Drills of Obedience

They turned breathing into math.

At dawn the barracks lamps shifted from red to white and the floor vibrated with the Imperial Harmonic—the baseline pulse transmitted through the Lattice, the invisible network of resonant stone that stitched Empire, shrine, and soldier into one beat. Recruits formed ranks on the sigil-tiles. The drum in the ceiling thumped once, then settled into tempo.

"Cadence on!" the instructor barked.

Metal bands at every wrist hummed. The vibration pressed into bone—gentle at first, then insistent. Most recruits slackened into it the way tired men lean into a wall. Kael matched the step, eyes forward, mouth shut. Inside, he breathed against the beat, a hair off. Not defiance—camouflage.

"Left—two—three—hold."

Boots hit stone as one.

The instructor—Adept Corvan, a man with a voice like filed iron—walked the rows with a tuning fork fixed to a black haft. When he struck it, the air around the nearest recruit thickened. If the recruit's heart lagged, the fork whined. A second strike reset the body. A third meant a cuff to the temple and a cold cot in the infirmary.

The fork passed Kael. He let his pulse fall into the acceptable window, then slid it free again. A fraction off. Always his, never theirs.

Corvan paused. The fork hovered near Kael's chest.

The tine quivered. Not a warning—an uncertainty.

Kael lowered his gaze like a dutiful conscript.

Corvan moved on.

After march drills came Breath Tables—rows of copper pipes that fed measured air into masks. Recruits strapped in and matched their inhalations to the valve rhythm. A gauge above each station traced a clean wave when the breath aligned.

Seris took the station beside Kael. He fastened the mask with nervous, clever hands and rolled his eyes toward the gauge. "Try not to make this thing sing," he muttered through the rubber.

Kael's wave line ticked steady, fractionally late. Seris watched both gauges at once. "You always do that?"

"Do what?"

"Miss by a hair," Seris said. "Looks like sync until you stare."

"It gets me through inspection," Kael said.

Seris' eyes warmed. "Useful habit."

Rheon slid onto the far station, posture perfect. His wave traced the textbook curve. "Useful would be learning to obey," he said. "We're kept alive by harmony."

Seris made a face under the mask. "We're kept obedient by it."

Rheon's cheeks tightened, but he said nothing. The valve hissed; the room breathed on command.

A bell chimed. Masks off.

They filed into Theory Hall—a long chamber where diagrams of the Lattice hung like constellations. An old priest with a voice like warm ash lectured from a dais.

"The Lattice is the world's circulatory script," he said, tapping the chalk across a map of lines radiating from a central glyph labeled CITADEL. "Resonant stone carries the pulse across provinces, harmonizing shrines and cities. When dissonance accumulates—war, famine, heresy—the gods bless us with Renewal. Impurities are purged. Memory is lightened. Civilization resumes."

He said it as if describing the tides.

Kael memorized the diagram instead of the sermon: seven arterial routes, each broken by Anchor-nodes—pillars, shrines, sub-stations—feeding the main trunk toward the Citadel. The pattern matched fragments he'd seen in Guild archives. The Empire had simplified the drawing for recruits. Even their lies were tidy.

A hand rose at the back. "Sir," a recruit asked, "why do some provinces sing at slightly different pitch?"

"Aesthetic variance," the priest said smoothly. "Local color."

Seris leaned close. "Local color is a polite way to say the Lattice is straining."

Kael didn't answer. The chalk moved; the lesson ended with the usual prayer. "Memory is burden; Renewal is freedom."

The room repeated it. Kael's lips barely moved.

Afternoons were for Pulse Chambers—sealed rooms where the camp's Node Core amplified the Imperial Harmonic. Recruits stepped inside in groups of eight. A wall meter showed alignment: blue for perfect, white for drift, red for resonance anomalies.

Adept Corvan watched from behind glass. "Hold your line," he said into the tube. "The Node is a gift. It keeps your heart honest."

The door clanged shut.

The hum rose from the floor. It climbed Kael's shins, the way cold water climbs when you wade too deep. His band buzzed, eager to drag his rhythm into lock. He relaxed his arms, softened his jaw, and let the hum take the edges only. Keep the center yours, Liora had taught. Let them take your shadow if they need it.

The meter over their heads flickered: blue-blue-blue—white—blue. A red tick flashed, then vanished.

Corvan rapped the glass. "Who drifted?"

No one spoke.

"Again."

The hum deepened. Two recruits swayed. Rheon steadied one by the elbow without shifting his own breath. Seris clenched his jaw and stared at the meter like he could intimidate it into agreeing.

Kael felt something new: the Node's tone thinning around him, as if skirting his chest, then thickening to compensate. The room compensated. The Lattice was not a static hymn; it listened and recalibrated. The meter blipped red again. Brief. Denied.

Then the door opened. Air rushed in like relief.

"Dismissed," Corvan said. His eyes lingered on Kael a fraction too long.

Infirmary after chow. Seris had been assigned there—low rank, high nerves, steady hands. He smuggled Kael into a supply alcove between racks of dull medicines.

"What is this?" Kael asked.

"A place where the band can be 'accidentally recalibrated,' " Seris said, undoing Kael's clasp with two clicks. He slid a wafer of resin under the band's inner rim. "Thin buffer. Still reads sync, dampens pull."

"Why?"

Seris shrugged. "Because one day I might need the favor returned."

Kael re-fastened the band. The hum against his wrist softened half a step. "You don't like the Node."

"I don't like anything that decides my breath," Seris said. "But I like keeping my head attached. So we pretend."

Rheon's shadow filled the doorway. "Pretend quietly," he said. "If Corvan finds you tampering—"

"He'll pray over my corpse," Seris said, too fast to sound brave.

Rheon's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. "Report at 0400," he told Kael. "Live-fire conditioning."

He left. Seris exhaled. "He's not wrong. Corvan eats nerves for breakfast."

Live-fire proved he wasn't exaggerating.

They stood on a gravel range facing plates of resonant iron cut in human silhouettes. The plates hummed faintly—their own tiny lattice, tuned just sharp of the camp's beat. It made the teeth ache.

Corvan paced the line. "Resonance is not just breath and step. It is weapon. Focus it on command. If your heart can't be ordered, your hand can't be trusted."

He raised a hand. The targets sang—a peak in the whine that lifted hair along Kael's arms. "On my mark, exhale and send. Imagine a line from heart to palm."

"Mark."

Recruits thrust palms forward. Heat folded the air. The front row's plates rang, dented, steamed. A few recruits shouted—their own pulse kicking back through their arms.

Kael half-sent, enough to crumple the edge of his plate without turning the gravel to glass. Control, not spectacle.

Corvan's fork hummed approval in front of Rheon. At Kael's station, the fork hovered again, uncertain.

Corvan's eyes narrowed. "Again."

They sent until throats burned and wrists throbbed. Corvan corrected angles, stances, breath width. "You," he said to Kael finally. "You pulse hot and then you step away from it. Commit."

"Yes, Adept," Kael said.

On the next mark he committed—just a hair. His plate bowed center, a clean crater. Corvan moved on.

Rheon's voice found him between volleys. "You hold back like you're saving yourself for something."

"I am," Kael said.

"For what?"

"Breathing tomorrow."

Rheon snorted. "Fair."

Evenings were for the Chapel of Rhythm—a hall where priests turned doctrine into lullaby. Recruits stood under a vaulted ceiling carved with concentric rings, listening to sermons about Renewal as cleansing rain.

"You carry burden," the priest intoned. "Let the gods lighten you. Let the Lattice hold what your mind need not."

Kael studied the architecture instead. Resonant ribs arced through the stone, coupling the chapel to the Node beneath. Prayer here did not rise; it sank. The room confessed your breath to the floor.

On the way out, he murmured to Seris, "This place isn't for worship."

Seris raised an eyebrow. "No?"

"It's a measuring cup."

Seris' grin was quick and tired. "Welcome to the Empire."

The first real slip came on a storm night.

The valley shook; lightning crawled the clouds without touching ground. The barracks' lamps dimmed, then flared. The Node's hum wavered—not silence, not failure, just a half-note wrong, like a drunk hand on a harp.

In the dark between flickers, Kael's pulse rose. Something in the Lattice shifted to meet it—like water finding a new channel.

His wristband buzzed a warning. The dormitory meters ticked yellow. Men muttered in their sleep. Kael slowed his breath to a crawl. He could feel the Node searching for his beat and missing by a finger's width.

He gripped the edge of his cot until the lights steadied. When morning came, the hall smelled faintly of hot metal.

Rheon sat up, hair a mess. "You feel that?"

"Just the storm," Kael said.

Rheon looked unconvinced but let it go.

Inspections followed storms. Corvan marched three squads into Echo Room B—a cube lined with dull stone. No altar, no meter. Just a square of floor that felt heavier than the rest of the camp.

"Stand," he said. "Breathe. Say nothing."

They stood.

Kael knew rooms like this by rumor—Listening Cells where the walls held tiny veins of tuned ore. Bodies were instruments; the cell read the song.

A minute passed. Two. Sweat cooled on spines. Someone coughed and swallowed an apology.

Kael kept his breath small, his pulse late, his thoughts quiet.

The heaviness pressed against him. It nosed along his ribs, searching for the brightest thread. He hid it behind dull hunger and the memory of cleaning latrines.

The pressure withdrew.

Corvan's mouth flattened. "Adequate."

On the way out, Seris whispered, "They're hunting anomalies."

"They didn't catch one," Kael said.

"Not this hour," Seris replied.

Orders came on a slate at noon: Division Seven, Resonance Cadre to deploy for Shrine Stabilization Exercise—Frostline Sector. Seventy-two hours. Cold kits. Auxiliary medics assigned: Seris. Fireteam leads: Rheon, Vance.

Kael traced the route with his finger. Frostline. Borderland. Old Anchors under ice and fear. He'd seen maps by candlelight in the Hidden City showing fractures there, hairlines ready to split.

Rheon clapped his shoulder. "Good. We'll do real work now."

Seris packed vials into a box with too many careful clicks. " 'Exercise,' " he said. "They love that word."

"What do they call it when the ground swallows us?" Kael asked.

"Training outcome," Seris said.

They both smiled without humor.

That night Kael stood alone on the barracks walkway. The Heart Node pulsed at the complex center, throbbing red through stone like a visible heartbeat. Beyond the walls the valley looked asleep. It never was. The Lattice never slept; it only quieted.

"Vance," Rheon said behind him. "You're different."

"How?"

"You listen like a priest," Rheon said. "But you don't pray."

Kael kept his eyes on the Node. "Maybe I'm listening for something the priests don't hear."

"What's that?"

"When the song ends," Kael said.

Rheon blew out a slow breath, almost a laugh. "Let's hope it doesn't end while we're on leave."

The humor died quick. Orders were orders. Frostline would come with cold air that bit the lungs and shrines that hummed sharp enough to cut.

Kael flexed his fingers. The Lines beneath the skin warmed and cooled in a calm wave, obedient to his count, not the Node's. He could fake their rhythm. He could match it. But he would not belong to it.

The drum sounded lights-out. In the dark, the camp's hum held steady, a wall-thick heartbeat pressing on every chest.

Kael lay awake, counting his own beat under it until both lines made a braid.

He would carry that into the snow.

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