CHRONOFOUDRE Book 1: The Awakening Chapter 6: Baptism of Iron
The bell shatters what little sleep I've managed.
It's still dark outside—not even a hint of dawn lightening the windows. My body screams protest as I swing my legs out of the bunk, muscles already aching from two days cramped in that godsforsaken wagon. Around me, the barracks erupts into groggy chaos as forty conscripts stumble toward consciousness.
"Everyone up!" A voice bellows from the doorway. Not Instructor Kael. This one's male, younger, with the kind of volume that suggests either genuine enthusiasm or sadistic pleasure. "You have five minutes to be dressed and in formation in the courtyard! Move!"
Five minutes. I've barely processed the words before bodies start colliding, people scrambling for clothes and boots in the semi-darkness. Someone trips over their own trunk and goes down hard, cursing. Another conscript—the crying boy from yesterday—just sits on his bunk, frozen in panic.
I dress fast. Years of early mornings at the forge taught me efficiency. Trousers, shirt, boots. The Academy-issued jacket is stiff with newness, smelling of dye and institutional laundering. It fits poorly, too tight in the shoulders, too loose in the waist.
Gregor is struggling with his bootlaces one bunk over, fingers clumsy with sleep and nerves. I finish mine and move to help him.
"I can do it myself," he snaps.
"Didn't say you couldn't. But we've got maybe three minutes left."
He glares but doesn't argue further, letting me tie one boot while he handles the other. Across the aisle, Mira is braiding her hair with practiced speed, already fully dressed. Finn looks lost, standing there with his jacket inside-out.
"Arms through the other way," I tell him, demonstrating with my own. He nods, pale face grateful, and fixes it.
The ice-eyed girl from the bunk across from mine is already gone. Must have dressed in record time.
"Two minutes!" the voice shouts again.
We pour out of the barracks like water from a broken dam, stumbling into the pre-dawn cold. My breath mists in front of my face. The courtyard mud is already churned into freezing slush from yesterday's rain.
"Form up! Three lines, ten across!"
We scramble into something approximating order. I end up in the second row between Mira and a broad-shouldered boy I don't know. Gregor is behind me. Finn managed to disappear into the back row.
The instructor pacing before us is maybe twenty-five, muscular in the wiry way that comes from constant movement rather than bulk. He has corporal stripes and the look of someone who genuinely enjoys his job.
"I am Corporal Drake," he announces, voice carrying easily despite not shouting. "For the next six months, your ass belongs to me. I will break you down and build you back up into something useful. Some of you won't make it. That's fine. The weak get filtered out early."
He begins walking the lines, examining us like we're defective merchandise. "You might be Awakened. You might have magic. You might think that makes you special." He stops in front of a girl in the first row. "It doesn't. Magic without discipline is just noise. Power without control is suicide. My job is to teach you both."
He moves on, pausing at the boy beside Mira. "You're fat."
The boy flinches. "I'm not—"
"You're fat," Drake repeats matter-of-factly. "That's fine. We'll fix it. Six months of my training and you'll either be fit or gone. Your choice which."
He continues down the line. Reaches me. His eyes catch the lightning scars on my forearms where my sleeves have ridden up.
"Time-aspected lightning. Interesting." He meets my gaze. "Think you're special because of it?"
"No, sir."
"Good answer. Wrong mindset, but good answer." He leans in closer. "You are special. That magic could make you a weapon like this Empire has rarely seen. But right now, you're just another conscript who doesn't know his ass from his elbow. Remember that."
"Yes, sir."
He moves on, finishing his inspection. Returns to the front, clasping his hands behind his back.
"We're going to run now. Five miles. If you fall behind, you will catch up or be left behind. If you vomit, you will keep running. If you collapse, you will get back up or be assumed dead. Questions?"
No one speaks. What would we even ask?
"Outstanding. Follow me."
He sets off at a pace that seems reasonable for about thirty seconds. Then my lungs start burning. Then my legs start protesting. By the end of the first mile, I'm questioning every life choice that led me here.
The fat boy is struggling, wheezing with each step. Mira's face is bright red but she's keeping pace. Gregor looks furious, which seems to be his default state, but he's managing. The ice-eyed girl runs with mechanical precision, her breathing controlled, face expressionless.
Finn falls during the second mile. Just trips over his own feet and goes down hard on the frozen mud. Drake doesn't stop, doesn't slow, doesn't even look back.
I grab Finn's arm, haul him up. "Come on."
"I can't—"
"You can. One foot in front of the other. Don't think, just move."
He stumbles along beside me, and we somehow keep up with the group. Barely.
The third mile is when people start vomiting. The fat boy first, then two others. True to Drake's word, no one stops. We just keep running, the taste of bile mixing with the burn in our throats.
Mile four is when the crying boy from yesterday actually collapses. He goes down hard and doesn't get up. Drake circles back, checks his pulse briefly, then flags down a passing patrol.
"Academy infirmary. Magical exhaustion or weak constitution, I don't care which." He returns to us without further comment. "Keep moving!"
We finish the five miles as the sun finally breaks the horizon, painting the Crystal Towers in shades of rose and gold. Under other circumstances, it might be beautiful. Right now, I'm too busy not dying to appreciate aesthetics.
Drake brings us to a halt in the courtyard. Half of us immediately collapse. I stay standing through pure stubborn pride, though my legs are trembling badly enough that I might fall anyway.
"Pathetic," Drake observes, but there's no real heat in it. "But expected. We'll run this same route every morning. In six months, you'll do it without breaking a sweat. In a year, you'll do it while maintaining combat readiness. For now—" He checks a pocket watch. "You have fifteen minutes for breakfast. Be back here in your training clothes. Dismissed."
We stagger toward the mess hall like a herd of wounded animals.
Breakfast is porridge again. I'm starting to suspect porridge is the Empire's answer to all nutritional questions. It's gluey and tasteless, but my body doesn't care, demanding fuel after that run.
I sit with Mira, Gregor, and Finn at a long table. None of us talk. Too exhausted and too focused on shoveling food into our faces as quickly as possible.
The ice-eyed girl sits alone two tables over, eating with the same mechanical precision she applies to everything. I catch her watching me once, but when our eyes meet, she looks away without acknowledgment.
"Training clothes" turn out to be even worse than our regular uniforms. Rough canvas trousers, a sleeveless shirt that offers zero protection from the cold, and thin-soled shoes that are going to be murder on my feet.
We reassemble in the courtyard with maybe thirty seconds to spare. Several conscripts are missing—either couldn't make it back in time or gave up entirely. The crying boy isn't among the returned. Neither are three others from our barracks.
Four down before the first real day even begins.
Drake appears, now accompanied by two other instructors I don't recognize. All carry wooden training weapons—staffs, practice swords, and something that looks like a cross between a club and a paddle.
"Physical conditioning," Drake announces. "Your bodies are temples of war. Currently, they're more like poorly maintained sheds. We're going to fix that."
What follows is two hours of pure torture.
Push-ups until my arms give out. Sit-ups until my stomach feels like it's tearing. Squats, lunges, planks, and exercises I don't even have names for. The instructors circulate, correcting form with sharp words and occasionally whacks from those paddle-things when someone's technique is particularly awful.
I get hit twice. Once for letting my back sag during push-ups, once for not going low enough on squats. The paddle stings like hell, but the humiliation burns worse.
Mira is struggling with anything requiring upper body strength. After the third time she collapses during push-ups, one of the instructors—a severe woman with iron-gray hair—kneels beside her.
"Weak arms?"
"Yes, ma'am," Mira gasps.
"We'll build them. But you need to push past the pain. Your muscles don't grow when you're comfortable."
"I'm trying—"
"Try harder."
The woman walks away, leaving Mira to either succeed or fail on her own merits. I see her jaw set, determination replacing defeat, and she forces herself through five more push-ups before collapsing.
But she did five more. That counts.
Gregor is actually good at this part. His farmer's build translates well to physical labor. He powers through the exercises with grim efficiency, like he's attacking each one personally.
Finn keeps up through sheer terror, I think. He's reed-thin and clearly not built for this, but he doesn't quit. Gets hit with the paddle more than anyone—eight times by my count—but never stops trying.
The fat boy doesn't make it past the first hour. He's sick three more times, then collapses and doesn't get back up. The gray-haired instructor checks him over briefly, then signals for removal.
"Weak constitution," she declares. "Won't survive combat training."
He's carried off, and we keep exercising.
By the time Drake calls a halt, I can barely stand. My entire body is one massive cramp. Sweat plasters my shirt to my skin despite the cold, and I'm pretty sure I've discovered muscles I never knew existed solely because they're all screaming.
"Ten-minute water break," Drake announces. "Then we move to magical theory."
Magical theory sounds infinitely better than more physical torture. I allow myself a moment of hope.
The theory classroom is in one of the Academy's main buildings—a drafty stone room with high windows and hard wooden benches. We file in, grateful to be sitting even on uncomfortable seats, and wait.
The instructor who enters is unlike any I've seen so far. Ancient, probably seventy at least, with a long white beard and robes that mark him as a senior mage. He moves slowly but with precision, setting down a stack of books on the desk at the room's front.
"I am Master Aldren," he says, voice surprisingly strong despite his age. "I have been teaching magical theory at this Academy for forty-three years. In that time, I have seen approximately eight thousand students pass through these doors. Do you know how many I remember?"
Silence. No one dares guess.
"None of you." He surveys us with rheumy eyes. "You are all the same. Raw power, zero understanding, convinced your magic makes you special. My job is to teach you just enough theory to avoid accidentally killing yourselves or your squadmates."
He picks up a piece of chalk, begins writing on the blackboard behind him. His handwriting is spidery but legible.
"Magic is the manipulation of Aether—the fundamental energy that permeates our reality. All Awakened can sense Aether to some degree. Some of you can shape it, channel it, transform it into various effects we categorize as elemental magic."
He draws a circle, divides it into sections.
"The eight primary elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Lightning, Ice, Light, and Shadow. Most Awakened manifest affinity for one, occasionally two. Manifestation of three or more primary affinities is exceptionally rare."
The ice-eyed girl raises her hand. Master Aldren nods to her.
"What about compound affinities? Like metal or wood?"
"Compound affinities are secondary manifestations—combinations of primary elements. Metal is Earth and Fire. Wood is Earth and Water. They're more common than multi-primary affinities but still relatively unusual." He adds notes to his diagram. "Anyone else?"
I raise my hand, surprised at my own boldness.
"Yes?"
"What about time-aspected magic? Is that a primary element?"
The room goes quiet. Every head turns to look at me. Master Aldren sets down his chalk, studying me with new interest.
"Time magic is not elemental. It's dimensional. A completely different category." He approaches my bench. "You manifest time-aspected abilities?"
"Lightning with time properties, sir. The testers called it Chronofoudre."
"Show me your arms."
I roll up my sleeves, revealing the lightning-scar patterns. Master Aldren examines them closely, not touching but looking at every branch and curl.
"Remarkable," he murmurs. "I haven't seen dimensional scarring in... well, decades." He returns to the front of the class. "Dimensional magic—time, space, gravity—is theoretical for most mages. It requires both immense power and incredibly precise control. Those who manifest it often can't control it and either die or destroy themselves and everything around them."
"Comforting," I mutter under my breath.
If he hears, he doesn't acknowledge it. "Time-aspected lightning would theoretically allow manipulation of temporal flow in localized areas. Slowing down time, perhaps accelerating it. The lightning aspect provides the delivery mechanism; the temporal aspect provides the effect."
He looks at me directly. "If you survive training, you'll be extraordinarily valuable to the Empire. If you lose control even once, you'll kill everyone in a hundred-yard radius. No pressure."
The class shifts uncomfortably. I can feel eyes on me, and not friendly ones. Great. Now I'm not just another conscript—I'm a potential bomb.
Master Aldren continues his lecture, moving into the mechanics of Aether channeling, but I barely hear it. My mind is stuck on his words.
Kill everyone in a hundred-yard radius.
I think about the raid. The twenty raiders I erased. Was that control or luck? Could I do it again deliberately? Should I even try?
The class ends after two hours of dense theory that my exhausted brain can barely process. We're given a short break, then it's back to the courtyard for what Drake cheerfully calls "practical application."
Practical application turns out to mean "try to use your magic without killing anyone."
We're divided into groups by element. Fire users to one corner, water to another, earth, air, and so on. The handful of us with unusual or rare affinities get lumped together in a miscellaneous group supervised by a bored-looking instructor with captain's insignia.
There are seven of us: me, the ice-eyed girl, a boy who claims metal affinity, twin girls with what they describe as "sound magic," a younger kid with gravity manipulation, and someone whose magic apparently involves plants.
"Right," the captain says, consulting a roster. "Let's see what we're working with. You." He points at the metal-affinity boy. "Show me something."
The boy concentrates, extending his hand toward a pile of scrap iron in the corner of the courtyard. The metal trembles, rattles, then one piece flies into his palm. He catches it, looking pleased with himself.
"Basic ferrokinesis. Useful for equipment maintenance, potentially for combat." The captain makes a note. "Next. Twins."
The girls exchange glances, then both open their mouths. The sound that emerges is like nothing I've ever heard—a perfect harmonic chord that resonates in my bones. The windows in the nearby building vibrate, and one cracks.
"Stop!" the captain orders. They comply immediately, looking guilty. "Sonic manipulation. Excellent for crowd control, terrible for indoor operations. We'll work on modulation."
He continues through the group. The gravity kid can make small objects float. The plant-manipulator grows a flower from a seed in seconds. Each demonstration is noted, categorized, filed away into the Empire's vast bureaucracy.
Then it's my turn.
"Chronofoudre," the captain reads off his roster. "Time-aspected lightning. That's a new one for me. Let's see it."
I step forward, suddenly aware of everyone watching. The other elemental groups have paused their own practice to observe. Even Drake has stopped his circuit to pay attention.
"I'm not sure how to control it, sir. The last time it manifested, it was instinctive."
"Then we'll start simple. See that practice dummy?" He points at one of the battered training targets across the courtyard, maybe twenty yards away. "Hit it with lightning. Don't think about the time aspect yet. Just basic elemental channeling."
I focus on the dummy, trying to remember how it felt during the raid. The desperate need, the terror, the power building inside until it had nowhere to go but out.
But I'm not desperate now. Not terrified. Just tired and self-conscious and very aware that if I lose control, people will die.
Nothing happens.
"Dig deeper," the captain instructs. "Find the core of your power. It's there—you've used it before. It's just dormant."
I close my eyes, searching internally. There—a spark, a flicker of something that wasn't there before. Like a banked coal waiting for oxygen.
I reach for it.
The spark catches. Heat spreads through my veins, but it's not burning me, it's waking something that was sleeping. My eyes snap open.
The world shifts.
Everything slows. The captain's next instruction stretches out, his voice dropping several octaves as time dilates around me. I can see individual snowflakes drifting past, each one unique and perfect and hanging almost motionless in the air.
Power builds in my right hand. Violet-silver light crackles between my fingers, arcing and dancing. The lightning-scars on my arms begin to glow, matching the energy I'm generating.
I point at the dummy.
The lightning lances out.
It crosses the twenty yards in what feels like slow motion from my perspective, but I suspect it's actually moving faster than normal lightning. It strikes the dummy dead center, and instead of just scorching or burning—
The dummy ages. In the space of a heartbeat, centuries of entropy compress into a single moment. The wood blackens, cracks, crumbles to dust. The fabric disintegrates. The straw stuffing scatters on a wind that wasn't blowing a second ago.
When the lightning fades, there's nothing left but a small pile of decomposed matter where the target stood.
Time snaps back to normal. The world lurches into regular speed. I stagger, suddenly exhausted, every muscle trembling.
"Holy shit," someone breathes.
The captain is staring at the remains of the dummy, then at me, then back at the dummy. "That... that wasn't just lightning. That was temporal acceleration at the point of impact. You aged it to death."
"I didn't mean to do that," I say quickly. "I was just trying to hit it."
"But you did it. That's what matters." He makes a note on his roster, his hand shaking slightly. "Alright. That's enough demonstration for today. You need to work on control before we try anything else. Dismissed to your next rotation."
The other conscripts are giving me a wide berth as I walk away. Even Mira looks uncertain. Only the ice-eyed girl seems unimpressed, though she's watching me with calculating interest.
Gregor catches up to me as we head toward the next training section. "So you can make things ancient with lightning. That's not terrifying at all."
"It felt wrong," I admit. "Like I was breaking natural law or something."
"Maybe you were. Time's not supposed to be a weapon." He shrugs. "But neither is fire, and people manage that just fine."
I don't have an answer to that.
The rest of the day blurs together. More physical conditioning. A lecture on military hierarchy and regulations. Weapons practice with wooden swords that leave my hands blistered despite the calluses I built at the forge.
By the time evening meal rolls around, I'm so exhausted I can barely lift my spoon. The mess hall is quieter than breakfast—everyone too tired for conversation. We eat mechanically, fuel for damaged bodies.
I count heads in our barracks before sleep. We started with forty-three. We're down to thirty-seven.
Six gone in one day.
I fall into my bunk without bothering to undress fully, just kick off my boots and surrender to unconsciousness.
No dreams. No nightmares. Just black emptiness and the desperate need for rest.
Somewhere in the darkness, the bell will ring again.
And we'll do it all over.
Welcome to the Academy.
Welcome to the forge.
End of Chapter 6