Seren sat on the opposite cot, rewrapping her hilt in fresh cord, fingers moving with careful, habitual economy.

"You think this is a real mission?" she asked, voice flat.

Soren shrugged. "Real enough that there's a body count. Not real enough anyone above Dane cares who makes it back."

She finished the wrap, tied it off, and set the sword across her lap. "Kale's already betting on who drops first. He says you, but only because the twins convinced him there's a curse on your squad slot."

"There's a curse on him if he says that loud again," Soren said. "You ready?"

Seren looked at him, and for once the facade slipped a little. "I want to be," she said, "but I think they're hoping we fail in a different way. Like the test isn't survival, but what we do when there's no one left to punish us for failing."

He liked her logic. It matched the sense of every briefing, every hollow speech from Dane. "You ever think of not coming back?" he said.

She smiled, then. "Just once. Decided it was less work to finish the thing than to run from it."

He grinned back, though it didn't reach the edges.

They sat in silence, letting the dusk eat the corners of the room.

Deployment morning started with the kind of cold that lived under the blood, no matter how many layers you wore. The squads filed onto the muster ground, the wall behind them gleaming with dew and the city below still blurred out by fog.

The instructors stood in a line, black coats like church crows at a wedding. Dane paced the front, but it was Cirel who addressed the squads.

"You are not here to impress me," she said. "Or anyone else. You are here because someone above me wants to see what happens when the experiment runs on its own inertia. I am here because I have nothing left to lose if you all die in the corridor."

She turned, slow as a sundial. "You carry real blades, you wear what passes for armor, and if you get lost, you do not expect a rescue. You will meet your client at the first junction and proceed as instructed by the local liaison. You will represent the Spire. Make that mean something."

The march out of the Academy was quiet, the only sound the slap of boots and the low, nervous breathing of thirty people who'd never seen the city walls from the outside. Soren felt the old ache in his wrist, the echo in his sternum, the certainty that nothing about this was going to follow plan.

At the city gate, a figure waited: slender, not tall, draped in a cloak of severe blue over what looked like formal wear. She wore her hair in a braid tight enough to serve as rope, and her lips were stained a color that made her teeth look almost impossibly white. Her eyes, black, not because of paint but because that was the color of the iris, surveyed the squads with a mathematician's detachment.

She raised a hand, then spoke. "I am Lady Iria Lethren, Envoy of Velrane. You will address me as 'Envoy' or 'Lady Lethren' and you will not, under any condition, touch me or my property. Is that sufficiently clear, or do I need to repeat myself for the slower elements?"

Nobody answered, which was the right play.

She nodded, then: "Our route is Meridian Corridor, then the pass at Shale Edge. Once we clear the far side, your contract is complete and you will return to Aetherion. If you die, I will see to your remains personally."

Soren thought she looked like the kind of person who would.

The line moved out, Soren's squad in the middle, Cassian's unit ahead, both twins close at hand. The city vanished behind them, replaced by a landscape that was neither wilderness nor road, but the sort of liminal space where nothing lasted long enough to be mapped.

He kept his head down, boots steady, and let the rhythm of walking erase the sense of destination. It was the only way to avoid counting the number of times he'd done this in simulation, and the number of times it went wrong even then.

After half an hour, Liane broke the silence. "How long you think before the first test?"

"Already started," Soren said. "You just haven't seen the part with blood."

Nobody laughed, not even Kale.

They pressed on.

The first checkpoint was a stone marker, weather-blasted and scored with the same runes that lined every corridor of the Academy. Soren recognized none of them, but the pattern at the base, triple bar, then spiral, marked it as either a boundary or a warning.

Lady Lethren paused at the marker. She gestured for Soren to approach.

"You're the lead for Gray Company?" she said, voice pitched to carry only to him.

He nodded.

"You do not look like a student," she said, matter-of-fact.

He watched her, then shrugged. "Don't act like one either."

For the first time, the edge of her mouth twitched, the faintest suggestion of either smile or irritation. "Good. I need results, not polish."

He waited for the rest.

She said, "If we are attacked, your priority is to get me to the pass. Everything else is expendable." She left it there.

Soren nodded. "Understood."

They broke for a quick ration, then kept moving. Soren tracked the twins as they fanned out, Kale and Jannek keeping rear watch, Seren just behind Lady Lethren like a wolf waiting for the wounded.

The day wore on, and the corridor got narrower, pinched by cliffs and the kind of bramble that meant nothing had passed here in weeks. Soren listened for birds, or the absence of birds. He trusted the quiet less than he trusted the Lady.

At the next turn, the world went suddenly, perfectly still.

He signaled a halt and the squad compressed around their client, steps going quiet as cats. Soren clocked the distance to cover, the number of likely places an ambush party could set up, every line of approach. His pulse did not rise. If anything, he felt a sort of restful blankness, it was the brief span before the world remembered to demand something of you.

A single note of birdsong pierced the hush, then vanished. Soren glanced at Seren, who gave the barely perceptible nod that meant: "I heard it too, and it's off." He shifted his grip on the sword, not to draw but to hint to anyone watching that he could.

Nothing came.

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