CHAPTER 166: ADVERSARIAL COMPOSITE (1)

At dawn, the courtyard stilled itself, every wall, window, and flagstone slab leaching the last night’s rain into a uniform chill that had the effect of glassing over the world. Even the birds, for whom time was currency, only chirped in brief, uncertain snippets.

Soren stood in the third row from the front, boots slick and eyes dry, the pre-briefing cold clamped around his calves like a manacle. Each breath condensed and vanished before it could be admitted as evidence.

Dane stood in armor, top half only, hair left unbound so that in the dead gray of early light it made him look less like a Swordmaster and more like someone who’d woken from a worse dream than anyone else assembled.

He rapped a baton against the central pillar as if testing the soundness of its foundation, then let the stick hang at his side. The circle of instructors behind him, Verrin, Hest, and the woman who was either the new warden or the old strategist from two cycles back, were all in field dress, weathered and waterproofed, faces set against the wind.

"Two companies," Dane announced, not projecting his voice so much as letting it roll out and settle where it would. "Blue and Gray will conduct a timed field exercise. Objective: secure and defend the central nave at Edge Hollow. Breach, then hold. Real steel, dulled at the point. No armor but what you bring yourselves. Medical protocols in effect."

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.