He found himself on the drill square.

  Alone.

  No recruits. No voices. Only dead silence and a slate-gray sky without a sun. The air was still. The ground

  beneath his feet was desiccated, scorched to lifelessness. Training dummies and targets lay

  abandoned—smudged, ragged, as if a battle had already passed through.

  Footsteps sounded behind him. Heavy. Even.

  He turned slowly.

  At the center of the square stood a figure in black armor, gleaming with a dead, muffled light. A horned

  helm hid its face; from the eye-slits licked tongues of black fire. The greatsword pulsed with blood-red

  runes, steady as an angry heart. Skulls carved into grimaces of pain capped its knees.

  There was no smoke. No flame.

  Yet everything stank of ash.

  “This is your place,” said a voice—cold, distant, not entirely here. “Here you will learn to kill. Here you

  will learn to survive.”

  Algar tried to answer. His throat was dry. No sound came.

  “You were weak. So I gave you fire. I gave you death. I cleansed you.”

  The black-armored figure raised the sword and drove it into the earth.

  The square shuddered. Every wooden dummy burst into flame.

  “I ordered your village burned.”

  The words struck like a hammer.

  Algar stumbled back. A scream clawed at his chest, but his body refused it. He could only tremble.

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  “You have no home. No mother. No sister. No brother.” The voice drew closer, pressing in on him.

  “When you’ve learned what you must, I will return—and ask if you are ready.”

  Algar dropped to his knees.

  The square began to sink beneath him, dragging him down. The runes along the sword flared, pulsing

  faster.

  “Stand!”

  The command rang like an order and a curse at once.

  “Or be only a memory.”

  He woke with a violent jolt.

  His heart slammed against his ribs. Sweat soaked his brow; his breath came thin and shallow. Dawn

  leaked through the narrow window. From the corridor came footsteps, laughter, shouted orders. The

  barracks were waking. A door banged. Someone yelled that assembly was soon.

  Algar sat motionless.

  The echo of flames still burned behind his eyes.

  He stood. Morning already. Before heading out, he lingered a moment longer, as if trying to set the

  feeling into his bones.

  No one paid him any mind. Boys his age moved through the room. A joke flew; someone laughed. He

  felt like a shade among the living. They didn’t know what he had just endured. It hadn’t been a dream.

  He stepped into the yard as the sun climbed lazily over the barracks roofs.

  At the center of the square stood a man with a neck like ship’s hawsers. Plain leather armor bore

  Starburn’s scuffed sigil. His face was crosshatched with scars; his eyes allowed no argument.

  “Decurion Arvad,” he barked. “If anyone’s still wondering whether he belongs here, turn around and go

  back to the gate with the rest of the useless refuse. The rest of you just found a new purpose. As of

  today, you’re the kingdom’s cannon fodder—under my command.”

  Algar knew no one, but he recognized the looks: fear, hunger, exhaustion. Some were younger than him.

  Others a few years older. A few still wore the tatters of farmers’ and merchants’ clothes.

  They were issued kit—plain shirts, wool trousers, tired belts, boots barely holding together. A wooden

  sword. A helmet with a bent rim. Nothing fit.

  Training was relentless.

  Laps around the yard. Sword drills—striking posts until arms burned. Then more running. The sun

  climbed higher. Sweat soaked their backs; knees shook at the end of every set. Algar went down

  once—not from fatigue, but on another boy’s foot.

  No one helped him up.

  He rose on his own.

  He spoke to no one. One boy met his gaze, hard and challenging, then looked away when he saw the

  cold in Algar’s eyes.

  By evening, Arvad dismissed them. Only those who’d elbowed into the mess early ate. None of Algar’s

  group had.

  He returned to his room. The same bunk. The same dust drifting in the air.

  He lay down without washing. Without food. Without a word.

  His shoulders burned. His feet throbbed. Hunger twisted deep in his gut. And though the image of the

  black-armored figure still pulsed behind his eyes, one thing was certain now.

  He knew who his enemy was.