The mission began like the last: quiet, disciplined, routine.
Sirius stood shoulder to shoulder with Kael and Rhea, their breaths fogging faintly in the cool night air. The three waited in the shadows of an abandoned rail station beyond Insomnia's barrier. Rusted tracks stretched into the dark, weeds curling through cracked pavement. Above, the barrier shimmered faintly, its crystalline glow reflecting off stormclouds.
Behind them, the city of Insomnia blazed like a jewel — towers of crystal and steel lit by floating lanterns and magitek veins. Ahead lay only emptiness: ruined farmland, broken roads, and the silence of a world that had fallen behind the capital's brilliance.
Cor Leonis stood before them, voice low and iron. "Tonight, we track. You follow me. You do not act unless ordered. Remember the creed—observe unseen, protect without being known."
They nodded in silence. But unlike the last mission, they were not alone.
Two older candidates joined them—boys closer to fifteen, lean and hard-eyed. They carried short spears and moved with the ease of those who had bled longer in training. Sirius felt their gazes linger on him and the others, faint dismissal in their eyes. Children, still learning to crawl.
Cor gave no introductions. He simply turned and moved, and they followed.
---
The path led them into the hills beyond the station. Moonlight silvered the grass, shadows crawling between rocks. No towers gleamed here. Only abandoned barns, collapsed fences, and the husks of tractors rusting in fields long since overrun by weeds.
The faint hum of magitek engines reached them before the lights—a Niflheim scouting caravan, three armored transports crawling across the land. Their headlights slashed pale beams across the ruin.
The five candidates crouched low as Cor raised a hand.
"We shadow them," he murmured. "We record their path. Nothing more."
Simple. Easy. No combat. Sirius forced his breathing calm.
But easy was a lie.
---
The Imperials stopped at a ruined barn, its roof half-collapsed, its wood blackened with age. Soldiers disembarked, setting lamps in the dirt and forming a perimeter. Magitek rifles hummed as coils warmed. A few dragged crates into the barn, its splintered door hanging like a wound.
Cor gestured for them to spread. Kael slid into the grass, Rhea pressed herself against broken stone, and Sirius followed the older boys along the flank.
It was supposed to be observation only. They crouched, unseen, as the Imperials worked. Sirius counted patrols, spacing, movements.
Then it happened.
A loose stone shifted under one of the older boys' boots. The crack echoed like thunder in the still night.
An Imperial's head snapped up. "Contact! Over there!"
Rifles charged. Bolts of blue light ripped across the ruins.
"Fall back!" Cor thundered.
They scattered.
---
Chaos swallowed the night. The Imperials shouted orders — "Suppress fire! Pin them down!" — as boots hammered the dirt.
The older boy sprinted ahead of Sirius, panic wild in his steps. His spear clattered against rubble as he stumbled.
The first shot tore through his shoulder. He screamed, falling to one knee. His comrade grabbed him, hauling desperately.
"Get up, damn it!"
Another shot cracked. This one burned straight into his chest. The scream died in a wet gasp. His spear fell from his fingers. His eyes widened, desperate, searching for someone.
Sirius froze.
The creed whispered in his mind: Protect unseen. Bleed without witness.
But that boy was not unseen. He was right there, dying in front of them.
Cor's katana sang. Two soldiers fell, blood steaming in the cold grass. His eyes flicked once to the wounded boy, then hardened.
"Leave him."
The words cut sharper than any blade.
"But—!" the surviving candidate cried.
"Leave him!" Cor snapped. "He's already dead. Save yourself, or you'll follow him."
The wounded boy's hand reached weakly, trembling. His mouth opened, but only blood came. His eyes met Sirius', pleading.
Sirius' chest constricted. He wanted to move, to drag him, to do something.
Rhea yanked his sleeve. "White Wolf! MOVE!"
Kael shoved him from behind. Sirius stumbled, then broke into a run, throat burning.
Another rifle cracked. The boy's body jerked, then lay still.
---
They didn't stop until dawn tinged the horizon.
When Cor halted them miles away, silence fell. Four returned where five had set out.
Cor's voice was iron. "You saw what happens when discipline fails. One sound, one step — death follows."
The surviving candidate trembled, eyes hollow. Rhea's smirk was gone. Kael's expression gave nothing.
Sirius clenched his fists until blood pricked his palms. He couldn't breathe past the weight in his chest. He saw the boy's hand reaching, his eyes begging. He had done nothing.
Nothing.
---
Back in Insomnia, Cor dismissed them coldly. "Go home. Remember."
The gates swallowed them back into light. The capital glimmered — magitek trams whispered along rails, crystal towers shone in the morning sun. To the city, it was just another day.
To Sirius, it was a graveyard. Somewhere outside the barrier, a boy's body lay cooling in a ruined barn, unseen, unspoken, already forgotten.
---
Sirius sat cross-legged on the floor of his room. The faint hum of magitek panels whispered through the walls, steady and unchanging.
He closed his eyes. The boy's face returned instantly—eyes wide, hand reaching, lips choking on blood. Sirius inhaled, slow and deliberate, forcing his chest to rise evenly despite the storm that churned within.
What if I had gone to him?
The vision replayed in his mind. He saw himself rushing forward, dragging the boy to his feet, magitek fire burning across his back. Kael and Rhea falling beside him, Cor forced to abandon them all. Death upon death, rippling outward from a single choice.
Another vision: walking away instantly, cold and efficient. The boy dying alone in the dirt, his plea unanswered, but the mission intact. His comrades alive. The kingdom safe.
Both paths poisoned him.
His fingers curled against his knees, nails pressing into skin. He steadied his breath again, letting air fill his lungs, letting it out in measured rhythm. He whispered silently in his head: Inhale. Hold. Exhale.
Slowly, his heart stopped racing. His shoulders eased. The images remained, but they no longer tore at him with the same ferocity. He did not banish them; he carried them.
That was the creed. That was the price of silence.
He opened his eyes at last, staring into the dark. His crimson gaze gleamed faintly, sharpened not by anger, but by resolve.
I will not falter. If the choice comes again, I will be stronger. I will carry the weight… but I will not break.
The hum of the city outside drifted faintly into the room—magitek trams gliding, crystal towers glowing against the night. To Insomnia, it was just another evening. To Sirius, it was the first night he truly understood what it meant to walk in shadow.
He bowed his head once more, letting the breath flow steady. Calm. Still. The vow carved itself deep into his bones.