Wabash walked in first.He pushed the door open with one hand and stepped through without slowing down, his cloak shifting behind him as he moved. Egries fell in at his side almost immediately, the way she always did, like she had a map of wherever he was going and had already decided where she needed to be in it.Roderick came through second.He stepped inside and his eyes did what they always did in a new space, moved once across the room, left to right, taking in the layout, the exits, the positions of everyone already standing in it. Then he settled.The rest of them filed in behind him. Asta, Jabber, Elara, Flora, Yuki, Mira, all of them coming through the doorway one after another, the room filling up with the quiet shuffle of feet and the low sound of people finding their footing somewhere new.Wabash had already turned to face them by the time they were all inside.Roderick looked at him."Prince Wabash." His voice was level and careful,the voice of someone who was about to

The planning quarters were wider than the room they had just come from.A big round table sat at the center of it, heavy and dark, with a map spread across its entire surface, pinned flat at each corner, covered in markings that had clearly been added over time. Lines drawn and redrawn. Circles that had been crossed out and moved. Small symbols clustered together in certain areas and completely absent in others. It was the kind of map that told you a story just by looking at it and the story it was telling right now wasn't a good one.Four people stood around it.Two men, two women. All four in matching unit uniforms, dark and fitted, rank markings sitting clean on the shoulder. They had the posture of people who were used to standing in rooms like this and taking them seriously. When Wabash walked through the door they straightened up immediately, the quiet conversation between them cutting off mid-sentence."My lord." One of the female commanders said, dipping her chin."Commande

The unit behind them broke from the line and moved, flowing toward the low bench seating that ran along the side of the training ground, settling in, the noise of them filling the space as they sat. The murmuring picked back up immediately, quieter now, running back and forth between the rows."Who's he going to face first though?""One of the vessels, has to be.""You think he can take one?""The captain of the offensive team? At rank seventy five?" The speaker leaned toward the person beside them. "You remember when he faced the Prince and lasted longer than anyone else in the unit? I'd say he has a fair chance.""Fair chance is different from winning.""I know that. I'm saying fair chance.""Hmm."A short pause."Still. It would be something to watch."Back in the center of the ground, Mira was looking at the attack unit captain as he stepped forward into the open space. He was built lean and sharp, with quick eyes and the particular stillness of someone who was very used to bei

A little further along the edge of the training ground, Egries was standing apart from the group, watching.She had been watching Roderick, Asta, Flora and Jabber for the last minute or so,watching their faces, reading the conversation she couldn't hear in the movements of it. Her eyes moved from them back to Mira, still standing in the center of the ground, spear in hand, looking down at the captain with something unreadable on her face.Egries muttered to herself, low enough that only she could hear it."So Mira is from the Molten Clan."She looked at Mira for a moment longer."No wonder. The captain's body was able to move on its own because it recognised the attack pattern,it recorded it somewhere back in clan training." She looked at the captain slowly rising to his feet. "The question is how much of it he actually recorded."……………………….Back in the center of the fighting ground, the captain was on his feet.He let out a breath,long and steady, the breath of someone who had just

She was in the middle of another exchange, moving, redirecting, her expression completely calm. And he could see it now that he knew to look for it, the slight ease in her movement. The fact that she had not once, in this entire fight, looked like she was working hard. The smile that had been sitting on her face since the moment she powered up, easy and unbothered, the smile of someone who had given themselves a comfortable amount of room and was using only a fraction of it."That's why she's not finishing it." Asta said, the understanding arriving in his voice as he said it. "She's not holding back because she can't end it. She's holding back because she doesn't want to end it yet." He watched her redirect another of Caius's combinations without blinking. "She's letting him fight. She's giving him the space to show what he's got." He paused. "Because he's her little brother, basically."Then, from inside the fight, Mira's voice came across the ground, casual and warm, like she