Group B met after midday rations, in the far western yard of the Citadel—away from the main training fields, away from the eyes of the noble instructors who only cared about shining swords and loud victories.
The Support Yard was quiet.
Low stone walls ringed a dirt lot dotted with training dummies, obstacle courses, and a few archery targets riddled with holes. There were maybe twenty of us—thin, sharp-eyed, or simply too small to be front-line meat shields.
Perfect. This was where the monsters who hid their claws were forged.
An instructor waited in the shade of a crooked tree, chewing on a twig. He was thin, with a scar that went from his chin up through his left eye, the lid milky and blind.
"Line up," he said, not raising his voice, yet everyone heard him. "I am Instructor Halden. If you are here, it's because someone thinks you're worth more as a tool than as fodder. That doesn't mean you are. It means you have one chance to prove it."
I took my place near the end of the line. The others were an odd mix: a tall girl with a bow almost as big as she was, a boy with callused fingers that screamed "lockpick," a muscular girl with short hair and the stance of a street brawler.
And her.
Third from the front, shoulders drawn tight, hands clenched around the hem of her rough uniform—short brown hair, soft silver eyes that flinched at loud sounds.
Sera Valerius.
Alive.
Not yet the calm, smiling healer who'd joined our party years later. Right now, she looked like a frightened animal someone had dragged out of a burning house.
I'm too early, I realized. In my first life, I didn't meet her until two years from now, when we were both already soldiers. This Sera was still raw. Still breakable.
Still savable.
"First test," Halden said, snapping his fingers.
Two assistants rolled out a heavy crate. He kicked the lid off.
Inside were knives.
Not wooden practice blades—real steel. Short, balanced, simple. The kind of tool you used to gut a man in an alley or open a demon from throat to belly.
"You will each take a knife," Halden said. "You will show me how you hold it. That will tell me how you think. And you will not lie to me. If you've never used one, say so. If you have, I will see it in your hands."
One by one, the cadets stepped forward.
The tall archer girl held the knife awkwardly, blade pointing down, fingers too high on the hilt. Amateur.
The lockpick boy spun it between his fingers like a toy. Overconfident. Sloppy.
The brawler girl gripped it like she'd grip a rock. Strong, but inefficient.
Then Sera's turn came.
She moved like she was walking to her own execution. She reached into the crate, fingers trembling, and picked the smallest knife she could find.
She held it like... a kitchen tool. Blade turned slightly outward, loosely, ready to drop it and run if it cut her.
Of course, I thought. She was a healer even in this timeline. Her first instinct is to stop blood, not spill it.
When it was my turn, I reached in without looking and took the first hilt my fingers brushed.
It felt… right. Natural. I let my hand fall to my side, knife hidden by my sleeve, edge angled to strike from below. Minimal movement. Maximum damage.
A practiced assassin's grip.
Halden's good eye narrowed.
"You've killed before," he said.
A few heads turned. Whispers.
I shrugged. "I've survived before."
His lip twitched. Almost a smile. "You all heard that? That is the difference between wishful thinking and reality. The knife is not a symbol of courage. It is a contract. Once you hold it correctly, you've agreed to cut something."
He cast his gaze over the group. "You are in Group B because you are not big enough, loud enough, or dumb enough to be front line. You will not get glory. You will not get statues. You will get results—or you will be buried where no one can find you."
He pointed at the dummies. "Pairs. One attacker, one defender. Show me how you move. I will decide what you become."
The pairings started. I watched.
Sera got matched with a rawboned boy who looked like he'd punch through a wall just to see if he could. She stood opposite him, knife held in that same clumsy grip, breathing too fast.
I didn't like it.
"Against each other," Halden said. "You may draw blood. You will stop when I say stop."
I stepped forward. "Instructor. Switch me with him."
Every head turned.
The rawboned boy—Tarrow, if I remembered his name right from my first life—scowled. "What, scared I'm gonna break her?"
"Yes," I said. "And you will. By accident, if not on purpose."
Sera flinched at my bluntness.
Halden studied me. "Why the sudden interest, Kael?"
"She's going to freeze the moment he gets close," I said, not caring that she was right there, hearing every word. "He'll either hesitate because he doesn't want to hurt a girl, or he'll overcompensate to prove he's not weak. Either way, someone gets hurt badly and learns nothing."
Sera's throat moved. Shame. Anger. Fear. All tangled.
Halden turned his gaze on her. "Is he wrong, cadet?"
She swallowed. "I... I don't..." Her voice broke.
She couldn't even say it.
The others smirked. Weakness was blood in the water here.
Halden clicked his tongue. "All right, prophet boy. Impress me. You take her. Tarrow, you get the thief. I expect at least one broken finger."
Scattered laughs.
Sera looked at me like I'd just volunteered to drag her into a nightmare.
I'm sorry, I thought. But if I don't break you properly now, the world will just do it worse later.
We stepped into the circle.
Her eyes darted from my knife to my face. I saw flashes of her future in that gaze—how she'd looked at me when I was bleeding out on the Spire stairs, hands covered in my blood.
"Just stab me," she whispered, voice brittle. "Get it over with."
I blinked. What?
I saw it then—the purple bruises half-hidden under her collar, the thin white line of an old burn at her wrist. Someone had already broken her before she ever got here.
In my first life, I'd never asked about her past. She'd always smiled, always patched us up, always laughed off her own pain.
Idiot, I told my past self. You never looked.
"No," I said quietly. "We're not doing that."
Halden's voice cut across the field. "Begin!"
Sera's hand tightened on the knife. She squeezed her eyes shut and lunged. It was messy, telegraphed, full of blind panic.
I stepped aside and used two fingers to flick her wrist.
The knife went flying.
She stared at her empty hand in horror.
The others snickered. Halden said nothing.
"Pick it up," I told her.
She did, cheeks burning.
"Again," I said.
She rushed me, this time faster, anger overriding fear. Still sloppy. Still wide open. I could have ended the "fight" a hundred different ways.
I chose pain without injury.
I slapped the back of her hand, hard enough to sting. She yelped and dropped the knife again.
"You're not holding a snake," I said flatly. "You're holding steel. It will do what you tell it to do. Nothing more."
Her eyes shimmered. "I don't want to tell it to do anything."
"Then why are you here?"
The question hit harder than any blow.
Her jaw clenched. She bent, picked up the knife with shaking fingers. A thin line of blood appeared where she gripped too tightly against the edge.
Somewhere distant, metal clanged; someone in another pair fell, crying out. I shut it out. Right now, there was only this circle and this girl.
"You don't get to say 'I don't want to' anymore," I said. "The world already decided for you when it burned our homes down."
Her head snapped up. "You... you're from the frontier too."
"Ashford Village," I said, not softening the truth. "It doesn't exist anymore."
Her eyes widened. "I was from—"
"Later." I stepped in, close enough that the knife at her side would be useful if she even remembered she was holding it. "Right now, I'm going to attack you. Slowly. With plenty of warning. You are going to move out of the way. That is all."
"But—"
"No stabbing. No killing. Just not dying. Can you manage that much?"
Her lips trembled. Then, slowly, she nodded.
I raised the knife. "Coming. Step to your left when I move."
I slashed—not at full speed, not even half. A gentle arc at shoulder height.
She flinched… then jerked left, almost tripping over her own feet, but the blade missed her.
"Good," I said. "Again."
We repeated it. Over and over. Side. Back. Duck. Step in. Elbow. I never touched her with the knife. Only my off-hand, guiding, correcting, shoving when she froze.
Minutes passed. The others finished. Halden let them sit. He did not stop us.
Because he saw it too.
At first, Sera moved like a puppet yanked by invisible strings. Jerky. Hesitant.
Then her breathing slowed. Her eyes stayed open. She started to see the knife instead of just fearing it.
Slash. Step. Thrust. Lean. Her hair stuck to her forehead. Her lip was bleeding where she'd bitten it. But she was doing it.
"Now," I said, when I felt the rhythm take root. "Add this."
I tapped her blade with mine. "When you move, touch my wrist. Just a tap. No stabbing. Just mark where you could have cut."
She stared. "I can't—"
"You're not cutting. You're pointing. Do you want to be the only one in your unit who can't even point at danger?"
That hit something prideful buried under the fear. Everyone had that spark, somewhere.
"Fine," she muttered.
I attacked, slower than I could, faster than before.
She stepped aside. Her knife-hand wobbled… then snapped forward, tapping my wrist like she was afraid to bruise me.
"If I'd been a real enemy," I said, "you'd have slit my artery."
"But I didn't."
"Because I didn't tell you to." I let a ghost of a smile touch my lips. "You follow instructions well. That's a strength here."
She blinked rapidly. "I…"
"Again."
We kept going until her arms shook. Until sweat soaked her collar. Until her taps—those shy little touches—became precise, consistent marks on my forearms, my ribs, my throat.
She never once actually cut me.
But I saw the difference.
And so did Halden.
"Enough," he said at last. "Valerius. Vorn. Step out."
We did. Sera's legs wobbled. I stayed close without making it obvious.
Halden studied us both.
"Cadet Sera Valerius," he said, voice unreadable. "Background: frontier clergy ward. No combat experience. High healing affinity potential. Terrified of violence." He tilted his head. "But not incapable of learning."
Sera swallowed. "Sir?"
"You are useless as a front-line fighter," Halden said bluntly. She flinched. "But you move well when you're guided. You respond to pressure without shattering. That makes you a viable candidate for Battle Support: Close-Range Healer. You will learn enough knife work to keep yourself alive when your protector falls."
Her eyes widened. "Protector?"
Halden turned to me. "Kael. No surname. Frontier orphan. Unknown affinity. Suspicious combat instincts. You hide your stance until contact. You don't seek 'victory.' You seek control."
He stepped closer. His one good eye bored into mine.
"You remind me of a man I killed once," he murmured. "That's not a compliment."
I held his gaze. "He's still dead either way."
He barked a short laugh. "Fair." He pointed at Sera. "Congratulations, Kael Vorn. You just volunteered for a partner assignment."
Sera stiffened. "Partner?"
Halden's smile was thin. "Every close-range healer is assigned a primary shield. Someone whose job is to keep them breathing while they work. It is the most thankless, dangerous position in any squad." He looked at me. "And you just told me you can teach cowards to move."
The word "coward" made Sera flinch again, but he didn't soften it.
"I didn't volunteer," I said.
"You did the moment you stepped into that ring," Halden replied. "Consider it your punishment for opening your mouth in my class."
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[BOND FLAG: INITIATED]
[YOU HAVE BEEN ASSIGNED: PRIMARY SHIELD TO 'SERA VALERIUS']
[ECHO OF THE FALLEN — SPECIAL LINK AVAILABLE]
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE PARTIAL FUTURE COMBAT EXPERIENCE WITH THIS INDIVIDUAL?]
[WARNING: THIS MAY ALTER HER PERSONALITY AND FATE SIGNIFICANTLY.]
Sera was looking at me. Not with gratitude. Not yet. With wariness. Confusion. A flicker of something that might one day become trust.
In the original timeline, I had never been her "shield." Rylen had filled that role. She'd always hovered near him in battle, her healing magic wrapping his wounds in warm light while I took the brunt at the front.
He had taken her closeness like it was his right.
Then he'd killed me in front of her, and died before she ever knew the truth.
Different life. Different rules.
The option hovered before me. Share experience. Let the echoes of my fallen future seep into her bones. Make her stronger, faster. Harder.
But at what cost?
If I gave her even a piece of what I was—this void-edged survivor—would she lose whatever softness had allowed her to smile even as the world fell apart? Would I be saving her life only to murder the person she could have been?
I stared at the System window.
Then, slowly:
No.
[LINK: DECLINED]
[ECHO OF THE FALLEN REMAINS EXCLUSIVE TO HOST]
Sera blinked, as if she'd felt something pass her by without understanding what.
I exhaled. I'll train her the slow way. The human way. Not with stolen futures, but with scars earned properly. If she changes, it'll be because she chose to, not because I shoved my ghosts into her head.
"Fine," I told Halden. "I'll take the assignment."
"Good." He turned away. "Cadets, break. Physical conditioning in ten. Vorn, Valerius—stay."
The others wandered off, muttering. A few shot us curious glances. One boy eyed Sera like a liability. Another eyed me like competition. None of them mattered. Not yet.
When the yard mostly cleared, Halden sat on a low wall, rubbing his blind eye.
"You two did something useful today," he said. "Don't let it get to your heads."
"Sir," Sera murmured.
Halden looked at her. Really looked. For a moment, his hard façade cracked.
"Valerius. Why did you come here?"
She hesitated. Then, in a small voice:
"I didn't have anywhere else to go."
He nodded, as if he'd expected that. Then he looked at me. "And you, Vorn? What do you want from this place?"
Revenge.
Power.
A noose tight enough to hang gods.
But all I said was: "I want to make sure nobody I care about dies screaming again."
Halden studied me for a long time.
"You will fail," he said quietly. "Everyone does. People die. People scream. You will not be strong enough to stop all of it. Not even the Empire can do that."
"I know," I said.
"But," he went on, "if you're stubborn enough, you can make sure some of them live. That is the only real victory a soldier gets."
He stood.
"Get used to each other," he said, jerking his chin toward Sera. "You live or die together from now on. As goes the healer, so goes the shield. As goes the shield, so goes the healer."
He walked away, calling for the others to form up.
Sera and I were left standing in the dust.
Wind tugged at her hair. She stared at the knife still in her hand, then at me.
"Why did you step in?" she asked finally. "You don't know me."
"I will," I said. "We're partners."
"That's not an answer."
I considered her. The girl who'd bandaged my wounds a hundred times in another life. The one person who'd cried when I died. The one who'd never, not once, lied to my face.
"You looked like you were waiting to be hurt," I said bluntly. "I got tired of watching."
Her lips parted. A breath caught in her throat. Emotions flickered across her face too fast to read—anger, shame, something like relief.
"That's... stupid," she muttered, looking away. "You don't know who I am."
Not yet.
I extended my hand. Dirt-stained, callused, steady.
"Kael Vorn. Frontier trash. Worst knife teacher you'll ever have."
Despite herself, a tiny, reluctant smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.
"Sera Valerius," she said, taking my hand. Her grip was weak, but it was there. "Future worst healer you'll ever have."
"Good," I said. "We'll be awful together."
She laughed—a brittle sound, but real. It was the first time I'd heard her laugh in this lifetime.
And something inside my chest—some frozen piece—shifted.
[BOND FLAG STRENGTHENED]
[NEW TITLE UNLOCKED: 'FIRST SHIELD']
[EFFECT: WHEN PROTECTING A BONDED ALLY, WILLPOWER RESISTS FEAR AND PAIN-INDUCED STATUS EFFECTS BY +20%.]
Willpower. The one stat the System still refused to show me.
Unmeasurable, it had said.
Good.
Let the gods try to quantify what it meant to claw your way back from betrayal twice. Let them try to predict what I'd do for the few people I chose to keep.
That night, back in the Dregs barracks, Jax and his cronies avoided me like I was plagued. No one challenged my bunk. No one spoke to me unless they had to.
I sat in the dark, back against the wall, wooden sword across my legs. Replaying every movement from training. Sera's flinches. Her progress. Halden's eyes.
Then the Void stirred.
Not from hunger this time. From… attention.
[FUTURE ECHO: TRIGGERED]
My vision blurred. The barracks dissolved.
I was somewhere else.
Stone. Blood. Screams.
I was in a tunnel lit by blue crystals, slick with dark ichor. A battlefield. The air tasted of iron and ash. Soldiers in Imperial armor lay scattered, some in pieces.
At the far end of the tunnel, a figure stood alone, surrounded by a ring of corpses.
Lyra Ashenvale.
Her silver hair was matted with blood—hers and others'. Her sword, the famous Silver Fang, dripped black as if it had drunk the shadows themselves. Her armor hung in tatters, one arm useless at her side.
Opposite her, half-shrouded in darkness, something moved.
A tall, robed figure. No face visible beneath the hood—only twin points of cold silver light where eyes should be.
The voice that emerged was wrong. Too layered, like three people speaking at once.
"Regressor ally detected," it hissed. "Violation of divine constraint confirmed."
Lyra spat blood. "Took you long enough."
"You have interfered with the Weaver's design one time too many, Ashenvale," the thing said. "You shelter an anomaly. You blind our sight. You tilt the board."
"You rigged it first," Lyra snarled. "You and your gods. You made a game of our lives."
The air thickened. A crushing, suffocating pressure that forced everyone still alive in the tunnel—my future self included—to their knees. I saw him at the edge of the scene, sword broken, armor shattered, struggling to breathe.
He looked older than the last time I'd seen him in an echo. Lines etched at the corners of his eyes. A deep scar across his jaw. Exhausted.
But his eyes burned when they fixed on Lyra.
"Get out!" future-me croaked. "Lyra—for once—run!"
She glanced his way. And for the first time, I saw softness in her expression.
"Trust me," she said. "Just this once."
She raised her sword with her one good arm.
"This is your last warning," the robed being intoned. "Return the anomaly. Or be unmade."
Lyra smiled. It was bitter and bright and feral.
"Come and try."
She moved.
Faster than I'd ever seen her. Faster than my eyes could track, even with all my future training. A silver flash, a howl of Void-touched steel, a clash that made the tunnel scream.
For a heartbeat, she cut through the divine pressure. The weight lifted. Future-me sucked in air, eyes blazing.
Then the thing raised its hand.
Reality rippled.
Lyra's blade stopped inches from its throat. The silver light in its hood flared.
"Erase."
There was no blast. No explosion. No drama.
One moment, Lyra Ashenvale existed.
The next, there was an empty space where she had been.
No body.
No ash.
Nothing.
The Silver Fang clattered to the floor, the metal dim and dead.
Future-me howled.
The robed figure turned its gaze on him.
"Your turn, regressor."
The echo snapped.
I was back in my bunk, hands digging into the straw, chest heaving. Sweat soaked my shirt. My heart slammed against my ribs like it wanted out.
[FUTURE ECHO COMPLETE]
[INFORMATION RECEIVED: 'DIVINE AGENT' CLASS IDENTIFIED]
[THREAT LEVEL: TRANSCENDENT]
[ABILITY OBSERVED: ABSOLUTE ERASURE]
[TARGET: LYRA ASHENVALE, THEN HOST SOUL]
[NEW SYSTEM DIRECTIVE]
[DO NOT ALLOW EVENT 'LYRA ERASURE' TO OCCUR IN THIS TIMELINE.]
As if I needed that written in glowing letters.
I sat there in the dark, breathing hard, feeling the Void inside me swirl.
Absolute Erasure. A power that could unmake even someone like Lyra—body, soul, memory. Cleanly. Casually.
They'd sent that thing for her because she'd helped me.
And in that other future, I had failed her. Too weak. Too late. Too dependent.
Not this time.
They wanted me erased so badly they'd wipe out anyone who stood beside me.
Fine, I thought, a cold calm settling over the fear. Then I'll make standing beside me worth it.
Lyra. Sera. Elena. Halden. Even these nameless Dregs huddled in their miserable beds.
I couldn't save everyone. Halden was right.
But I could damn well make the gods work for every corpse they got.
"Come and try," Lyra had said in that tunnel.
In my bunk, staring at the ceiling, I whispered the same words into the dark.
"Come and try."
The Void shivered approvingly.
Outside, somewhere beyond these stone walls, Rylen slept in a clean bunk, dreaming golden dreams of heroism and glory.
I lay awake in filth and shadows, planning how to end him.
The war had already begun.