The valley exhaled.It wasn’t relief—not quite—but a loosening, subtle and cautious, like fingers unclenching after gripping too hard for too long. The morning light arrived soft and filtered, clouds stretched thin across the sky as if the storm had finally decided to move on for good.Echo Unit felt the difference immediately.No early alarms. No distant movement on the ridges. Even the radios seemed less eager to crackle with static and half-formed warnings. Men moved through their routines with the same discipline as always, but the edge had dulled just enough to notice.Captain Daniel Mercer stood near the operations board, reviewing overnight reports. Nothing new. Nothing urgent. That, in itself, felt strange.“Feels like the calm after a decision,” Hale said, joining him.Mercer nodded. “Not peace. Just… acceptance.”“By who?” Hale asked.Mercer looked out toward the valley. “Everyone.”Midmorning brought confirmation of what they’d all been sensing. Pike approached with a trans

The road out of the valley did not feel like an ending.It felt like a breath held too long—released slowly, carefully—so no one would notice the shaking.The convoy moved in a tight formation, dust curling behind each vehicle like a fading memory. No one spoke much over comms. There was nothing tactical left to say. Only personal things remained, and Echo Unit had never been good at putting those into words.Reed watched the landscape change through the narrow window. The familiar ridges softened into rolling terrain. The air felt different—lighter, maybe. Or emptier.“It’s strange,” he said to Ortiz. “I thought I’d feel relieved.”Ortiz leaned back, helmet resting against the seat. “You will. Just not yet.”“Why not?”“Because part of you is still back there,” Ortiz said. “It takes time to catch up with yourself.”Reed considered that. It felt true in a way he didn’t fully understand yet.At the front of the convoy, Mercer kept his eyes on the road. The GPS chirped occasionally, rec

The official orders came two days later.Not shouted. Not dramatic. Just a neatly formatted briefing delivered to Mercer’s terminal with the kind of clinical language that pretended lives were chess pieces instead of people.Echo Unit was being disbanded.Not immediately. Not harshly. On paper, it was almost generous—reassignments based on performance, recommendations for advancement, optional transfers into training, intelligence, or specialized task forces.It was the kind of ending the military liked. Clean. Efficient. Bloodless.Mercer stared at the screen long after he’d finished reading.This, he realized, was always how it ended—not with explosions, but with emails.He called the unit together that evening.No briefing room. No podium.Just the open space behind the barracks where they’d sat a hundred times before, helmets kicked aside, stories shared under foreign stars.The air was cool. The sky overcast.Hale leaned against a railing, arms crossed. Ortiz sat on a crate. Reed

Reed’s transport rolled out just after midday.The base gate shrank behind them, swallowed by heat haze and dust, until it became nothing but a memory stamped into the horizon. The truck rattled over uneven ground, the metal bench vibrating through Reed’s spine, and still his mind kept reaching backward like a hand trying to grab something already gone.Ortiz sat across from him, duffel between his boots, eyes fixed on the road ahead. He hadn’t spoken much since the formation. Reed could tell he was doing what he always did—holding everything inside until it either settled or broke.Pike sat near the front, shoulders tense, jaw set, tapping his thumb against his knee in a rhythm that screamed anxiety even when his face refused to admit it. Hale wasn’t with them. Hale had taken a different vehicle, a different route, headed toward command offices and quiet corridors where people wore clean uniforms and spoke in careful voices.Mercer had stayed behind entirely.Reed’s throat tightened

The first week in Vanguard blurred into a cycle of cold mornings and hard commands, like time itself had been stripped down to nothing but endurance.Reed stopped counting days.He counted bruises.He counted hours without sleep.He counted the number of times he had to swallow words that burned in his throat.Every morning began the same way—whistle, boots, formation, run. Then drills. Then more drills. Then tactical exercises that felt less like training and more like punishment disguised as preparation.And always, always, Major Kessler watched.He didn’t yell like some officers did. He didn’t need to. His voice stayed calm, controlled, sharp as a knife. He didn’t waste energy on anger.He used silence.Silence after a mistake.Silence after someone fell.Silence that made men panic, because they didn’t know what came next.Reed learned quickly that Vanguard didn’t care who you had been before you arrived. They didn’t care about past missions, past losses, or the kind of loyalty th