They called it dawn, but there was no sun—only a thinning of the black haze that smothered the sky. In a world where light had died with the Great One, morning was just darkness with slightly better visibility. Bright Morgan stood in line with a hundred others, boots sinking into the damp ground of the induction yard. His name felt like a cosmic joke, a cruel prophecy someone had slapped on a child born into eternal night.
The regiment's recruiters didn't bother with speeches or banners. They paced along the rows like butchers at a livestock auction, marking bodies, not names. Age didn't matter. Hope didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was whether you could swing a weapon long enough to die where instructed.
A grizzled officer with a torchlight lens over one eye stopped in front of Bright. The lens cast a thin ray that cut through the murk like a blade.
"Name," the officer said, not because he cared, but because the clipboard required it.
"Bright Morgan."
The officer snorted. "Sure you are."
A mark was scribbled down, nothing more. Bright remained expressionless. He'd long accepted his name as the universe's attempt at humor. In a world where monsters were born from the corpse of a god, irony flourished better than crops or joy.
They weren't given uniforms—just armbands dyed with whatever color was cheapest this month. His group's was a sullen gray, the official hue of disposable bodies. Rumor said the real soldiers called their company "The First to Fall." The army preferred clean terms like Forward Assessors or Pre-Engagement Shield Units. Most recruits translated it to the same word: fodder.
A siren wailed somewhere in the fort, hollow and distant. Birds hadn't existed in decades, so the call of the horn was the land's only morning chorus. Around him, the recruits shifted, some shivering in threadbare coats or scavenged armor. Most were quiet. The ones who talked did so to hide their fear.
Bright kept his hands in his coat pockets, fingers brushing the rough surface of his two battered blades—leftovers looted off corpses during the walk to enlistment. Regulations said recruits didn't get proper weapons until after assessment. Reality said if you showed up empty-handed, you'd be eaten by something before training even started.
He didn't enlist because of patriotism or vengeance or any other noble lie. He needed the serum. Everyone did. The monsters' claws didn't just cut—some carried rot in their veins, or shadows in their teeth. Infection was slower than death, but only just. The serum was the only thing that kept your body from collapsing after the first strike. Civilians got none. Soldiers got a vial a week… if they lived long enough to use it.
A man to his left whispered, voice shaking, "They say the captain's an initiate. Strongest in the fodder ranks."
"Initiate? Without a core?" another muttered. "How'd he get that far?"
"Soul talent," the first man said, as though repeating a myth he wasn't sure he believed. "Strength multiplier. Four times the strength and toughness of a normal man."
Bright didn't react. An initiate with a power but no core meant someone too poor or unlucky to buy crystals. Titles in the army were a lottery for the desperate, not the valiant.
A horn blew again. Officers began organizing squads, directing bodies with curt gestures. Bright was herded into a group of twenty. The man at the front was built like a stone wall—broad shoulders, scarred jaw, eyes that had stopped expecting anything years ago. His gray armband was darker, marked with a thin iron stripe.
"Company Captain Roegan," someone whispered behind Bright.
Roegan looked them over with the efficiency of a man assessing tools, not comrades. "You're not soldiers yet. You're bodies we'll try to shape into something that doesn't die immediately."
A few nervous laughs sputtered. He ignored them.
"Three days of basic drills. Then patrol rotation in the outer ring. You survive your first month, you'll get evaluated for crystal pairing. You die? Someone else gets your rations. Don't slow us down."
He moved on without waiting for acknowledgment. The group followed, feet dragging through the mud.
The camp was a patchwork of old stone, rusted metal walls, and torches mounted in cages of wire. Tents sprawled in uneven clusters, stitched from tarp, animal hide, and scavenged cloth. Shadows clung to everything, even with the lamps burning. Visibility beyond twenty paces was a luxury reserved for people with functional eyes or expensive powers.
Bright inhaled the air—damp, metallic, tinged with the acidic reek that always followed monster tides. Somewhere beyond the fort's perimeter, he could hear faint growls and the distant thunder of movement underground.
Monsters hadn't always existed. They were born from what was left behind when the Great One died. No one agreed on what the Great One was—a god, a titan, a world-splitter—but everyone agreed the world had ended the moment it fell. The soil hadn't recovered. The seasons had twisted. And in the rot of the corpse, creatures clawed themselves into existence, hateful and hungry.
Bright didn't fear them. Fear was for things you could afford the luxury of avoiding. What he feared was dying stupidly—tripping in the mud, getting separated, being eaten by something he didn't even see coming. He had no crystal core yet. His soul talent, fusion, was little more than a rumor in his bones. All he could do now was press two blades together and hope they didn't fall apart mid-swing.
They were led to a training yard marked by rope stanchions and scorched earth. Instructors barked orders while tossing wooden spears and blunt swords to the recruits.
"Pair up," one yelled. "If you don't have a partner, you'll be fighting the wall. The wall always wins."
Bright found a spot near the middle of the group. He stayed there deliberately—not too close to the edge where the first attackers always died, not too near the front where eager idiots drew attention.
As he tightened the cloth around his arm and tested the grip of his blade, a thought flickered in his mind, dry and sharp:
Maybe one day I'll live up to my name. Or die proving it was a mistake on the birth ledger.
Either way, the world wouldn't care.
The instructor's whistle shrieked.
Training began.
And the fodder line moved one step closer to the dark.
"If you enjoyed it, please add to your library—it helps a lot!"