POV: General CaneI had watched men like Seth rise before, watched them lifted carefully, almost gently, by systems that pretended to admire strength while quietly measuring how to survive it. The pattern never changed, only the faces did, the banners did, the slogans did. I had been young once too, foolish enough to believe recognition meant protection, foolish enough to believe medals were shields instead of markers.Seth stood across from me in the Red House corridor, freshly titled, freshly weighed, freshly boxed in by smiles that did not reach eyes. He looked the same as he had on the battlefield, quiet, alert, distant, like he was already somewhere else, like the room itself was something he tolerated rather than belonged to. The silence between us was thick, not awkward, just full of things neither of us rushed to say.I broke it because silence is how men like him die.“They’ll clap louder tomorrow,” I said, voice steady, controlled, practiced by decades of briefings and funer

Virek's POV Virek watched everything unfold from the shadows of the Red House’s upper levels, where monitors stacked like jagged glass reflected the pulse of the country below. Lines of data scrolled in real-time, showing Seth’s access points, his unusual clearance paths, timestamps of restricted archives, and most dangerously were Rose Tyrel’s medical readouts. The young General had moved with an ease that was unnerving, slipping through layers of bureaucracy and security like a phantom, as if the world itself had made way for him.Virek leaned back in the chair, fingers steepled, a faint crease between his eyes, the weight of centuries of strategy and survival settling in. He’s not just moving, he’s evolving again, Virek thought. Not like a soldier or a revolutionary, not like a weapon assigned to a mission. He’s moving like the system never existed.He reached for the comms panel, his voice calm but precise. “Activate all dormant surveillance feeds, silent mode. Track every step

 Cassandra's POV. Cassandra learned quickly that the weeks after a war did not feel like relief, they felt like paperwork wearing a human face, they felt like hallways that never ended, like forms that smiled, like screens that said processing and meant waiting, the city of Velkor didn’t explode into chaos the way people imagined after the fall of something powerful, it reorganized, quietly, efficiently, as if the revolutionary army had simply been a corrupted file that the system was now deleting and replacing with cleaner code. From the upper balcony of the temporary command wing, she could see reconstruction crews moving through districts that had once been marked red on every tactical display, cranes lifting steel like ribs being reset, drones stitching together power lines, medics stationed on every major corner not with urgency but with routine, like shopkeepers opening in the morning, the media towers were already a

The first sign was the silence.Noel had been expecting chatter, questions, jokes... anything from the new recruits, but as he entered the dormitory where they had been staying since their induction, the atmosphere was off. People didn’t move, conversations died mid word. The usual nervous energy, the tentative bravado of newly recruited Evolves who hadn’t seen a battlefield yet, had vanished. Only a few heads lifted when he approached, and their eyes were wide, taut, too alert.He followed the tension to a single bunk. A bed had been stripped, sheets folded neatly, equipment removed, but the air felt wrong. And on the floor, the smudge of something that didn’t belong on a clean surface caught his attention, a streak of red, faint but unmistakable.His stomach dropped.“Where… who’s…” Noel began, his voice trailing.“They… he…” One of the younger recruits, barely out of training, trembled as he spoke, “he didn’t come back from screening. They said… they said equipment failure, overexe

Noel's POVPeople didn’t die anymore.They vanished.That was the new word.Not KIA. Not missing. Not deceased. Not transferred. The terminals didn’t even bother dressing it up with military poetry. The screens simply changed status from ACTIVE to REASSIGNED, then removed the rest like it had never existed.No location.No unit.No handler.Just… gone.Noel noticed the pattern on the third morning.Two names missing from the roster board in Training Hall C. The spaces where their IDs had been were filled with neutral gray bars, the kind the system used when something was “under revision.” The instructors didn’t mention it. The med staff didn’t mention it. The quartermasters didn’t mention it. The other recruits whispered it like a superstition.He stood in front of the board longer than necessary, coffee cooling in his hand, shadows curled low around his boot