They didn’t march back—they limped.
What was left of Roegan’s patrol pushed through the fog in silence, caked in mud and gore. No one spoke. No one needed to. The number of boots dragging through the dirt said enough—more than half never returned.
The camp’s outer sentries looked up as the survivors erged from the gloom. So stared. Others looked away. A few just clenched their jaws and muttered, "Blooded."
A word that ant:
You didn’t die yet. That’s all.
Roegan led from the front, armor torn, one arm dangling like it belonged to soone else. He didn’t even bother binding the wound. Strength multiplier or not, he bled the sa as any man—he just didn’t stop moving because of it.
"Report at dawn," he said, not even turning to look at them. "If you’re breathing by then."
That was the closest thing to comfort any of them received.
The dead weren’t even honored. They were dragged to the pyre pits, stripped of anything salvageable, and stacked for burning. If any of them had swallowed or injected cores, there’d be no sign now—not unless the surgeons checked the blood or the marrow.
The bodies were fuel before they were mories.
Bright said nothing as he watched Tobin’s corpse disappear into a sack. Whatever softness had survived until now shriveled and died with it.
They gathered near the supply tents, each slumping into the mud or against stacked crates. No warmth. No conversation. Just the hollow quiet of those who had seen death up close and learned it wasn’t impressed with them.
That was when he noticed the others clearly for the first ti.
Bessia
She sat on a broken crate, blood dried across her side where claws had opened her earlier. The torn flesh was sealed now—ragged, but closed. Her breathing was tight but steady. A thin welt still showed where the wound had been.
Her soul talent had saved her, and only her.
Soone asked how she wasn’t dead. She didn’t answer—just stared at the fire as if daring it to go out.
Duncan
A broad-shouldered boy wiped his sword clean with chanical movents. No soul talent. No core. Just calloused hands and a soldier’s instincts honed by desperation.
He fought like a cornered animal and lived because of it. He didn’t brag. He didn’t shake. He just kept breathing.
A dic nodded at him and muttered to another,
"That one—Duncan—didn’t break."
Link
Bright spotted him pacing near the dics, foot tapping too fast to be nerves. His movents had a sharpness to them—jagged, twitchy, coiled.
He had a crystal core in his body—that much Bright could tell by how he moved. No glow. No markings. But enhanced reflexes left a signature in motion that experience could read.
He made it out without a scratch. Not because he was brave—because nothing could catch him.
Soone whispered while clutching a bandaged arm:
"Link outran three of the bastards."
Adam
He wasn’t resting. He wasn’t cleaning his gear. He wasn’t even dirty.
Adam sat near the lantern poles with a scavenged map spread over his knees, muttering distances and attack angles under his breath. He looked like he’d wandered out of a library and into hell by accident.
No muscle. No combat skill. But alive.
Bright rembered seeing him during the fighting—hugging terrain, calling warnings, staying close to Roegan when others scattered. Survival not through strength, but awareness.
The camp quieted as night—or what passed for it—settled in again. Fires spat sparks into the dark. The stench of burning corpses bled into the air.
No one cried. No one prayed. No one scread.
They were past that now.
Bright sat with his back to a post, gaze flat, mind cold. He didn’t seek company, but his eyes skimd the faces of the few who didn’t break.
Bessia. Duncan. Link. Adam.
Not friends. Not allies. Just nas in the sa graveyard he walked in.
The difference was—they were still breathing.
And tomorrow, they’d be sent out again.
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