Aveline locked her chamber the moment the corridor gates sealed behind her. The metal bolts slid into place with a heavy clunk, followed by a secondary lock, and a third. She twisted the wheel manually, then keyed in an authorization seal, ensuring the door would reject entry even if someone carried override clearance. The barracks outside murmured with late-night foot traffic, but inside her room, the world contracted into silence—small, suffocating, private.The handkerchief lay on her desk beneath the lamp. A black military-issue slate and fountain pens from intake evaluations were scattered beside it, but the cloth drew all gravity. Its fibers were frayed by time, edges soft from years spent in darkness, yet the stain of old blood remained faintly visible, brown like oxidized guilt.Aveline stared at it, pulse stuttering.This was no mistake of identity. No confusion of optics. No coincidence of flare bursts. This was hers. A relic of a moment she had buried so deep that even reme

The world of Thalara was vast, proud, and merciless in how fast news traveled among its great houses. By the end of Day 4, the military had logged Ronan Crowne as a cadet who moved with instinct sharper than experience itself. But outside the barracks, the real battlefield was no longer fog or beasts. It was narrative.Consortium messengers, merchant fleets, political envoys, and noble informants carried the same report into the marbled halls of Thalara’s oldest and wealthiest families:The Crowne heir is surviving frontline duty with unusual composure. His intuition reads dominion pressure like lived experience, not theory.To some houses, the words carried awe. To others, they carried opportunity.Benedric Sable received the news not as a father, not as a clerical overseer, but as a man who saw assets slipping from his reach. In his administrative war room, ink pots rattled when his fist tapped the table.Ronan Crowne had become the axis.And axes attracted envy the way forged blade

Aveline Westmere had never feared battlefields, beasts, or political rails. She feared exposure. Because exposure could erase a name faster than war could earn one.The barracks were silent in the deepest hour of Day 4’s aftermath when sleep finally dragged her under. No audience, no monitors, no intake horns. Only her subconscious, an archive she could never fully shut.Her dream arrived the way truth arrives to the guilty: without permission.It was the New Year celebration at Thalara Academy, years before titles, ranks, or rival houses mattered. Seridora Vey was there—laughing lightly with noble friends, glass raised, ignorant of anything beyond youth and sparkle. The night was gold, loud with music, full of promises cadets believed would last.Aveline saw herself in the dream, younger, coat simpler, eyes still carrying love instead of blades.She watched the scene unfold from above her own sleeping body: the punchline of a memory she had mastered into invisibility. The banquet tab

The command chamber was quiet when Captain Hale initiated the encrypted call. Too quiet.The kind of silence that only appeared after a prolonged operational shift—when personnel had withdrawn, reports were archived, and only the low mechanical breathing of the base remained. Consoles hummed. Status lights pulsed steadily. Everything functioned. No alarms. No alerts.And yet, Hale did not relax.The signal connected after a single pulse.“General Bray,” Hale said, voice clipped, professional, stripped of rank theater. “I need your eyes on something.”The projection stabilized at once—clean, minimal, military-grade. No decorative interfaces, no personal identifiers beyond clearance confirmation. The man on the other end stood upright, posture precise, gaze already focused before Hale finished speaking. This was not a frontier officer accustomed to improvisation. This was someone forged in central-command review halls, where patterns mattered more than reactions.“Send it,” Alaric Bray

The notification arrived without ceremony.Aveline Westmere was reviewing intake schedules when her communicator chimed once—short, formal, administrative. She glanced down, expecting another routine update. Instead, a single line froze her breath in her chest.Central Oversight Arrival — Inspector Authority ConfirmedName: Alaric BrayShe read it again.Then a third time.The room felt smaller, as if the walls had leaned inward while she stood still. Her fingers went cold against the slate, and for a brief, humiliating second, her thoughts did not move forward—they fell backward.Not to military corridors.Not to audits.Not to Golden Blade traces or command reviews.To a night she had sealed shut with precision and patience.No one knew, she told herself immediately. The thought came fast, practiced, like a mantra she had repeated for years. No one saw. I was careful.Yet the reassurance rang hollow this time.Her gaze drifted, unbidden, to the corner of the room where her coat hung