The morning did not greet us.
It judged us.
The field lay silent beneath the fading stars, wrapped in that terrible stillness that only existed before violence—when even the wind seemed to hold its breath. The horizon was barely beginning to pale, a thin line of silver-blue cutting through the darkness.
This was it.
The final graded military examination.
One month remained before graduation. One month before we would be sent to the real frontlines—not as simulations, not as protected cadets, but as auxiliary forces standing beside soldiers who bled for every meter of ground they held.
This exercise would decide whether we belonged there.
The battlefield sprawled across kilometers of engineered chaos. Broken hills. Artificial ruins. Dense stone clusters. Ravines wide enough to swallow formations whole. Civilian zones—mock settlements built to burn, collapse, and test judgment under pressure.
The "civilians" were instructors.
They could fight.
They could flee.
And they could eliminate us.
There were no regeneration fields hovering overhead.
No magic suppressors.
No safety nets.
If we failed here, the pain would be real.
Every cadet squad was deployed.
Dozens of formations positioned across the field, each assigned different objectives—rescue, escort, area denial, suppression, extraction. The sky itself was laced with invisible monitoring runes, every movement recorded, every fluctuation analyzed.
We stood at our starting point.
Cadet Squad 28.
Twenty-five of us.
Captain Renia stepped forward.
The early wind tugged at her coat, lantern-light catching the silver trim of her uniform. She didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to.
"Look at this field," she said. "Remember it."
Her gaze swept across us.
"This is where fear exposes lies. Where panic strips excuses. Where only preparation speaks."
She began calling names.
One by one.
Every response was sharp. Grounded. Stronger than months ago.
When she reached the end, she paused.
"Elrin Mornye."
"Yes, Captain!"
Her eyes met mine—steady, unyielding, trusting.
"This squad," she said, turning back to the others, "was not built on talent alone. It was built on failure. On mistakes survived. On choosing each other when retreat felt safer."
She clenched her fist.
"Advance together."
"Protect without hesitation."
"And if the field demands blood—"
Her voice hardened.
"Make sure it isn't ours."
Silence followed.
Not uncertainty.
Resolve.
—
At exactly 0500 hours, a red flare screamed upward from the center of the battlefield.
It exploded.
A colossal magic circle unfolded across the sky—layered rings rotating, scanning, locking onto every Axiom signature present. The Grand Monitoring Construct.
The exercise began.
My heart slammed.
Before thought—
We moved.
ᚲᛋ ᚠᛏ ᛋᚱ(Crucis Flux – Vector Step)(Force Conversion – Directional Burst)
Magic ignited around my calves and the world lurched as the ground vanished beneath me. Wind howled past my ears. The squad surged forward beside me, formation snapping into place with practiced precision.
Whistles cut through the air.
Enemy sighted.
Civilian located.
Advance.
The field erupted.
Steel clashed in flashes of sparks. Magic detonated against stone, shockwaves rippling through terrain. Cadets vanished behind ruins and reappeared from above, below, everywhere at once.
"Left flank—two hostiles!"
"Shield up!"
"Civilian moving—escort now!"
We flowed through the battlefield like a living organism—fighters pushing forward, defenders rotating to cover, supports weaving spells beneath raised shields. When one stumbled, another filled the gap without question.
A civilian went down under collapsing rubble.
Three of us moved instantly.
I felt hands on my back as I lifted debris, Axiom reinforcing muscle, another cadet forming a stabilizing barrier as the instructor beneath groaned and coughed.
"Clear—move!"
We extracted.
Points gained.
No celebration.
We moved again.
Names echoed from the sky as eliminations were announced—some distant, some uncomfortably close.
Then—
The ambush.
The ground exploded to our right as a fire spell slammed into the rocks. Heat washed over us, sharp and suffocating. Our formation fractured as terrain collapsed, forcing separation.
"Scatter—regroup on me!" Captain Renia shouted.
But the enemy didn't let up.
A heavy fire-type cadet emerged from behind the rocks, mana blazing violently around him. His casting was aggressive—too aggressive. Flames pulsed erratically, feeding off rage instead of control.
"You squad of berserkers!" he roared. "Cadet Squad 28—be gone!"
Another fireball slammed into the ravine wall.
One of our supports screamed as debris pinned her leg.
"I'm stuck!"
A defender moved instantly, throwing up a barrier just as another fire blast detonated. The shield cracked but held.
On a split second... I felt it then.
The wrongness.
The enemy's Axiom spiked—wild, unstable, spiraling beyond control while casting a fireball spell towards us.
Then he fired.
"No—!" he shouted suddenly. "My Axiom—no—DODGE!"
The fire spell warped.
Collapsed inward. Everything became quiet for a millisecond...
Then expanded—
A Hailfire.
—
The command center erupted.
"Sir, unstable fire convergence detected!"
"That output will exceed safety thresholds!"
"We should deploy dispel mages immediately!"
General Ignis stood unmoving.
"...No."
"But sir—!"
—
From behind shattered stone—
I stepped forward.
Everything narrowed.
The screaming battlefield faded.
This was the moment every failure had led to.
I unwrapped my right hand.
The pure Axiom answered—steady, luminous, obedient.
I began constructing the spell.
A magic circles emerged from my palm, each having their own purpose.
Cause Circle — directional compression.
Effect Circle — explosive severance.
Cost Circle — personal Axiom draw.
Limit Circle — enforced ceiling.
Duration Circle — microburst.
Scope Circle — narrow vertical cone.
—
"Sir! Cadet Elrin Mornye is constructing a Burst-Type Directional Explosion Construct! This will just make the situation worse!"
"That monster brat again, is he planning to recreate the explosion he did months prior?"
—
Every lesson burned into me.
Every night at the mountain.
Every blade shattered.
Every correction.
I screamed the runes—
ᚲᛋ ᛗᚨ ᚱᛖ ᛋᛏ(Crucis Matrix – Resonant Severance)(Redirect and sever all unstable Axiom flows sharing a defined wavelength.)
The spell launched—
"GAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!"
Then before the explosion blooms, I twisted it.
Redirected upward.
The hailfire followed.
The sky ignited.
Five blinding flashes tore through the dawn, so bright they turned night into day. The explosion came after—a thunderous rupture that shattered the sound barrier, rolling across the field like the voice of a god.
The battlefield froze.
Wind screamed.
Dust spiraled skyward.
—
From the command center—
"Sound barrier breach confirmed!"
"No casualties detected!"
General Ignis turned slowly.
Behind him, the projection showed Elrin—arms raised, unharmed, everyone alive.
"No one is a monster," he said calmly."This one is nothing but a genius."
Elrin stood there.
Once called a berserker.
Once feared.
Now—
The sky bore his mark.
And it did not break.