The separation was swift, brutal, and devoid of ceremony.
The slave yard became a roaring meat market under the grim watch of the Northwatch soldiers. The soldiers, desperate for bodies to throw into the coming war, didn't care about lineage or loyalty; they only cared about height and gender.
Doran and Aris were pushed roughly into a line marked 'A'—Infantry Fodder. Their muscles, however underdeveloped, were deemed sufficient for holding a spear and acting as a shield for the actual knights.
Lenn, clutching his small slate tablet and trembling, was wrenched into line 'B'—Support and Logistics. His ability to quickly count and write, a skill only useful for tallying ore in the mines, suddenly made him a valuable clerk for the supply corps.
Mira and Tova, fighting back tears of cold fury, were shoved into the final column. This line was composed mostly of older women and younger girls, labeled simply 'Rear Support.' The assignment was vague, but its purpose was sickeningly clear: laundry, cooking, camp labor, and whatever else the soldiers demanded.
"Aris!" Tova screamed, lunging forward, only to be snapped back by a guard's fist to her shoulder.
"Mira, Lenn, listen to me!" Aris shouted over the din, struggling against Doran's desperate grip. "Stay safe! Stay alive! We find each other!"
Mira didn't shout. Her eyes, usually darting with quick intelligence, were wide and terrified, but she held Aris's gaze. She nodded once, a sharp, tiny movement that was both a promise and a desperate prayer.
Then, they were gone. Swallowed by the confusion, dragged toward different gates leading out of the Shadow Pits. The cohesive unit they had forged in the depths of the earth was shattered in ten minutes.
Aris felt a coldness settle in his stomach, far deeper than the mountain chill. In his previous life, he had merely died. Here, he was being torn apart. The loss of control was absolute.
Never again, the adult mind raged within the boy. Never again will I be this weak.
The march from the Shadow Pits to the training fort of Grimwatch took three grueling days.
The column was a terrifying sight: a thousand conscripts, chained wrist-to-wrist, most of them slaves, debtors, or political prisoners. The sound of their weary feet dragging through the mud and the clank of their chains was the new rhythm of Aris's life.
The guards drove them relentlessly. If a man stumbled, he was beaten. If he fell, he was dragged until he died or was cut loose.
Water was rationed by the sip, and food was a single, hard biscuit per day.
"I can't feel my legs, Aris," Doran whispered on the second night. They were huddled under a lean-to, the air thick with the smell of unwashed bodies and fear. Doran's large frame, built for hauling, wasn't built for endless marching.
"Focus on the pain," Aris whispered back, forcing himself to do slow, deep stretches in the darkness, movements he learned from his old life's conditioning. "Don't ignore it. Analyze it. If the ache is in the lower back, adjust your gait. If it's in the calf, force yourself to walk on the heel."
Doran looked at him, bewildered. "How can you think about walking?"
"If you don't think about walking, you'll stop," Aris replied, his voice flat. "And if you stop, we die. This is the new rule, Doran. We are metal. We feel nothing."
By the time they reached Grimwatch, Aris and Doran looked little different from the others—ragged, bruised, and starved. But unlike the others, Aris had not broken stride, and Doran, following his lead, was merely exhausted, not defeated.
Grimwatch was an insult to the name 'fort.' It was a muddy valley carved out between two low hills, ringed by a dilapidated wooden palisade. It was designed not to keep the enemy out, but to keep the conscripts in.
Their reception was immediate and violent.
As the thousand exhausted conscripts stumbled through the gate, a massive, blocky man stepped onto a wooden platform. He was bald, heavily muscled, and wore the insignia of a Master Sergeant.
His face was a mask of cold contempt. This was Sergeant Rath, the man who would either forge them into weapons or break them into dust.
Rath didn't speak a welcome. He spoke a death sentence.
"Look at you!" Rath roared, his voice thick and resonant. "You look like the things I scrape off the bottom of my boot! You are not soldiers! You are penal scrap! You are the refuse of the North, and you are here for one purpose!"
He paused, letting the silence draw taut.
"You are here to die," Rath stated simply.
"You are here to choke the passes so the honorable knights don't have to get their feet wet.
Every single one of you is already dead. The only question is, will you die as
screaming filth, or will you die as disciplined filth?"
He snapped his fingers.
Four guards immediately grabbed the nearest conscript—a frail, terrified old man who had been a debtor—and dragged him to a nearby post.
"This filth failed the first test!" Rath shouted, pointing to the old man. "He complained! He questioned! He broke rank!"
The guards began to beat the old man with thick wooden staves. The sound of the blows was sickeningly wet and loud. The rest of the conscripts flinched, some crying out.
Aris watched, forcing himself to breathe evenly, counting the blows, observing the technique of the guards. He nudged Doran, whose face was rigid with helpless horror.
"Don't look away," Aris whispered to Doran.
"Watch the stance. Watch the rhythm. Learn the cost of failure. Don't waste the lesson."
When the guards finally stopped, the old man was a bloody mess.
"You are not men! You are not citizens! You are the 4th Penal Legion!" Rath screamed. "And I am your King! Until you smell of nothing but discipline and fear, you belong to me!"
He pointed to a muddy field lined with rough barracks.
"You have ten minutes to find your barracks, claim a straw mat, and report to the drill field! Any man not on the field when the bell rings will be treated the same as that pile of refuse!"
Ten minutes. Aris didn't hesitate. He grabbed Doran's wrist and pulled him forward.
"We have no time for anger, Doran," Aris hissed. "No time for pity. We train. We survive. We find Mira and the others. That is the mission now. Everything else is noise."
Doran looked at the broken man on the post, then at Aris's cold, determined eyes. He swallowed hard.
"Okay, Aris," Doran choked out. "Show me the way."
They charged into the chaotic, muddy camp, two slave boys from the mines, one relying on iron determination, the other on blind loyalty, ready to face the hellish forge that would turn them into soldiers.