Several of the initiates flinched at 'real steel,' the phrase carrying echoes of the last time someone's tendon got opened on a "simulation." Soren tracked Cassian's reaction: no blink, but the old brightness in his eyes replaced with a more surgical intensity. He would treat this like a puzzle, not a tournament.

Soren let the words slot into place. 'Edge Hollow, not the inner circle.' Which meant the terrain was designed for containment, not speed. Which meant ambushes, dead ground, and the need to see three moves ahead or be ground up by those who did.

The brass bell at Dane's feet marked each name as he called it. "Dorelle, Cassian: you will lead Blue. Vale, Coren: command of Gray." The rest of the names clustered as expected, each group seeded with a mix of reliable, unreliable, and officially Troubling Elements.

Soren wound up with Kale, two of the blue-haired twins he'd never distinguished, Seren (unexpected), and a small, furred-ears transfer from the border provinces whose name Soren had not yet managed to pronounce aloud.

He didn't smile. The team made sense, but it felt like a test you only realized you were taking halfway through the essay.

"March is at the half-hour," Dane concluded. "Edge Hollow is an hour at quick pace. You meet on neutral ground. No shortcuts," here his eyes locked on Soren and Cassian by turns, "and no improvising the rules." He tapped the baton twice, a signal, not a threat. "You have ten minutes to choose squad runners and set comms. Dismissed."

The circle dissolved with a shuffle of relieved bootsteps and, in the case of Cassian's company, a low drone of theorycrafting too soft for outsiders to parse. Soren made a show of examining his own team, but really he was measuring the gaps: Kale already grinning a predawn madness, the twins in their perpetual mirror, Seren silent as chalk, and the transfer clutching his blade as if it might at any moment turn on him.

Seren walked over, hair already cinched and stance graveyard still, and glanced up at the sky like she wanted to see if the sun still existed. "You know Dane expects a blowout. Blue's all muscle, Gray just has us."

"It's not a muscle test," Soren said. "It's a velocity test." He caught Kale by the collar and steered him into the loose semicircle. "We run it like a shell game. Twins act as contact, pair with Kale and the transfer. We keep Seren in backfield until midpoint, then reverse velocity and break toward the nave."

Kale frowned, then saw the outline and nodded, lopsided. He'd always preferred plans that looked, on paper, like they would fall apart in ten seconds.

Seren said, "And you?"

"Bait," Soren said. No point masking the real division of labor.

Kale cackled, nearly dropped his canteen. "Classic Vale."

Soren wanted to tell them, especially Seren, that he had no intention of becoming a martyr for their mobility. But he knew the rumors anyway: that you couldn't bleed a stone, that Soren was just a placeholder for whatever happened after the fighting had clarified who actually deserved to wear the uniform.

Seren watched the other division uncoil across the yard, then said, "They think you're brittle. Cassian told Aria no blade would last two rounds if you pushed pace."

"Then we don't," Soren said, already cycling the map in his head. "We let them set the tempo. Then we trade up on the last quarter."

Seren's mouth twitched, something between skepticism and respect. "If you get cut, I'm not carrying you this time."

He rolled his shoulder. "I'll crawl."

She almost smiled, just at the edge of visible. "Don't be late."

Edge Hollow was less a ruin than a cautionary tale: four soaring arches left open to the wind, a scatter of broken pews, and, in the shadow of what had once been an altar, a pool of water so black it retreated from the sun.

The grass between the stones was slick with nocturnal runoff, each blade beaded with lenses of clarity that made the whole clearing look more real than anything that had come before.

The units advanced in staggered intervals, each keeping eyes on their own flanks and, in Soren's case, listening for the absence of birds, a sign that the other company would already be in position, waiting for a signal or a mistake.

He motioned the twins forward, their blue hair a vertical vector against the mossy ruin, and then sent Kale and the transfer in hook pattern along the perimeter. Seren hung back, fifty meters off and to the east, already kneeling in the grass with her blade upright and eyes scanning for motion.

'Not a muscle test,' Soren reminded himself. He needed to see the game through three layers: what Dane expected, what Cassian wanted, and, hidden underneath, what Soren actually needed, which was to get his team to the bell and back with all pieces intact.

For ten minutes, nothing but wind and the hish of boots in grass. Then, too soon, really, an impact. The leftmost twin yelped, blade knocked from her hand by a flicker in the rain mist.

Soren dropped, flattening into cover, and watched the hyper-clean formation of Blue Company sweep in: Cassian on the lead, Aria close behind, and then the rest in chevron, using the mist as tactical cover.

He signaled, small and sharp. The transfer and Kale peeled off, went to ground behind a fallen arch. Seren, unbidden, shifted left, Soren almost missed her in the gray, but now she had a clean line of sight on Cassian's advance.

Soren waited for the bait to work. Cassian, true to form, hit the exposed flank with all the overcommitment of a man who couldn't imagine losing to a scratch unit.

But as the Blue Company collapsed on the twins, the shell collapsed inward, Kale and the transfer pinched, the twins reset and rolled to the sides, and Seren, backline as ever, started a pivot that would cut off Blue at the central altar.

Soren ran the edge, reading the strike before it happened. Cassian's blade blurred, beautiful and unhelpful. Soren blocked twice, then let Cassian push him as if the pressure was too much, drawing the other boy forward, out of his own protection, toward the center line.

It was all very crisp, very textbook, and Soren hated how well it worked.

He twisted, reoriented, and dropped the sword tip to Cassian's sleeve, clear hit, but Cassian barely slowed, using the momentum to grab Soren at the wrist.

"Not this time," Cassian hissed, and for a second, Soren thought he would try to break his hand. Maybe he expected it, maybe he even wanted it. But it was an exercise, so instead, Cassian turned the lock and flung Soren face-forward into the broken grass, then stepped back, resetting with idiot precision.

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