The new memories... they made the training harder. Exponentially harder.
It wasn't the technique. It was me. I now had all of Takeshi's methods in my head—his patience, his structured lesson plans. But I also had his failure. I had the crystal-clear memory of dying, of leaving those kids behind.
It made me... frantic. It made me push, way, way too hard.
"Again," I said, my voice hoarse. We'd been at it for three hours. The four-way synchronization had failed for the fourth time, the shadow-construct flickering and collapsing. Everyone was trembling with exhaustion.
"Ren, we need a break," Zara panted, wiping sweat from her forehead. Her shadow was twitching erratically at her feet, a sure sign she was running on fumes.
"Five more minutes," I insisted, already moving back into position. "We almost had it. The stabilization was..."
" 'Almost' doesn't mean anything when we're all about to pass out," Elara cut in, and her voice, though exhausted, was pure steel. She'd been out of a cage for two weeks, but she had a spine Dren would respect. "Pushing us until we break doesn't make us stronger. It makes us dangerous."
"The cult won't give us a five-minute break," I shot back. "When they attack again..."
"We'll be ready," Torren interrupted, his small voice surprisingly firm. "But we won't be if we burn ourselves out in the yard. Master Dren taught us that. Remember?"
He was right. I knew he was right. But the guilt of Takeshi's failure was a physical weight, a screaming voice in my head that said faster, harder, don't fail them again.
Kaela, who had been watching from the sidelines with her arms crossed, her face a thundercloud, finally stepped onto the field.
"That's enough," she said. Her voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the tension like a blade. "Training is over. Everyone, rest. Ren. With me. Now."
There was no arguing with that.
She led me to the empty armory, the smell of oil and whetstones thick in the air. She kicked the door shut with her heel, and before it had even slammed, she was in my face.
"What, exactly," she demanded, her voice a low, furious growl, "do you think you're doing?"
"Training," I said, falling back on the obvious. "We have to..."
"You are not training," she snapped. "You're... you're repenting. You're trying to redeem yourself for a life that isn't yours, on people who aren't those kids. And you're going to get one of them hurt."
The accusation hit me like a physical blow. "That's not..."
"It is," she said, her certainty absolute. "Don't lie to me, Ren. I've known you our whole lives. You've been... unhinged... ever since your memory-thing. You're pushing them past exhaustion. You're treating them like... like they're porcelain, but also like they're machines. You're terrified they'll die if you're not perfect, and that's not leadership. That's a trauma response."
"The cult is coming back," I said, my voice weak, trying to justify it. "We have to be strong enough..."
"To what?" she stepped closer, her eyes blazing. "To guarantee no one ever gets hurt? To prevent every bad thing from ever happening? That's not possible, Ren! You're not a god. You couldn't save everyone in your last life, and you can't save everyone in this one. Trying to will be the thing that destroys you. And it'll take us right down with you."
She had named the exact fear. The one Takeshi died with.
"I failed them," I whispered, the words cracking. "Those kids... they trusted me. And I... I died. I broke my promise. And now... now I have another chance. If I fail again..."
"Then you fail," Kaela said. Her bluntness was, in its own weird way, kind. "And it will suck. And it will hurt. And you'll carry it. And you'll keep. Freaking. Going. That's life, Ren. But killing yourself—and us—to try and prevent failure? That doesn't honor those kids. It just wastes the second chance you got."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to explain that she didn't understand the regret. But the fight just... drained out of me. She was right.
"I don't know how to do this," I admitted, my voice barely a whisper. "I don't know how to lead... without trying to control it all. How to help them... without trying to build a wall around them."
Her face softened. Just a little. "You learn," she said. "Same way you learned to fight. Same way you learned the curse. You'll screw it up. We'll tell you. You'll adjust."
She pulled me into a hard, fierce hug, and for the first time since the memories came back, I let myself just... lean.
"You're not Takeshi," she whispered into my shoulder. "You're Ren. And Ren has people. People who will call him an idiot. You should try using us."
Despite it all, I huffed a small laugh. "You're calling me an idiot?"
"With great affection," she said, pulling back. "But yes. You're being an idiot. Stop it."
I found them in the common room. Lysara was running diagnostics, handing out salves for friction burns. The air was thick with the smell of liniment and exhaustion.
"I'm sorry," I said, just walking in. They all looked up. "I... I was pushing way too hard. I was... using you. Trying to work through my own stuff. Not... not training. I'm sorry."
Torren just looked down, uncomfortable. But Zara, her eyes sharp, nodded once. Acceptance.
"Apology accepted," she said, her voice crisp. "But you need to understand. We are not your redemption. We're not those kids from your past. We're us. And we need Ren to see us... not a second chance."
"I know," I said. "I'm... I'm learning that. It's harder than I thought, separating... then from now."
"Then let us help," Elara said, her voice quiet but strong. "You don't have to be the perfect, all-knowing leader. You're just a kid, like us, who happens to have extra memories. We can tell you when you're being a tyrant. When you're operating from fear."
It was a ridiculously mature offer from a girl who'd been in a cage two weeks ago.
"Deal," I said. "I'll try to be less of a... control freak. You all... try to call me on my crap. Agreed?"
"That's going to be a full-time job," Torren muttered into his water cup.
We all laughed. The tension didn't just break; it shattered. We were... a team. A weird, broken, traumatized team. But a real one.
Three days later, a stranger collapsed at the gates.
She was maybe nineteen, twenty. Traveling alone, armor in tatters, with the haunted, desperate look of someone who'd been running for a long, long time. The guards brought her straight to the council chamber.
She stood there, swaying on her feet, but her eyes were sharp. "My name is Mira," she said, her voice hoarse. "I'm convergence-marked. And I'm here to warn you. The cult is planning a coordinated, continental assault. They're going to hit every known sanctuary at once. And Verdwood... Verdwood is their primary target."
The chamber exploded.
"Order!" Elder Stoneheart roared. "How do you have this information?"
Mira's eyes found me, and my blood ran cold. "Because until two weeks ago, I was part of the cult's operational planning team. I was indoctrinated as a child. I've... I've been on raids. I helped plan the siege on this village."
Kaela's hand was on her sword. Ironwood was shouting for her arrest. But I just looked at her. I saw the self-loathing. The guilt.
"Why are you here?" I asked, my voice cutting through the noise.
"Because I watched you," she said, her voice shaking, but her gaze locked on me. "During the siege. I watched you fight... how you protected the younger kids. How you... chose to risk yourself. I realized... I realized the cult was wrong. That the marks... they don't have to be corruption. That... there was another way."
"So you defected," Lysara said, her mind already working, analyzing. "And you're here offering intelligence... in exchange for sanctuary."
"I'm offering intelligence because it's the right thing to do," Mira corrected, her voice fierce. "You need to know what's coming. What you do with me after that... is up to you."
Master Dren just nodded, his face a mask. "Continue."
What she described was a nightmare. A continental offensive. Simultaneous attacks. Hundreds of operatives, coordinating void entities on a scale we couldn't even imagine.
"They're calling it the 'Convergence Harvest,' " Mira said, her voice cracking. "The goal... the goal is to capture every marked child on the continent. In one night. One coordinated strike. Everyone who resists... will be 'purged.' Everyone else... indoctrinated."
"When?" Stoneheart's voice was a low rumble.
"Six weeks," Mira said. "Maybe less."
Six weeks. The words just hung in the air. Six weeks to prepare for an apocalypse.
"How many targets?" Lysara asked, her pen already flying.
"Seven confirmed," Mira said. "Verdwood is Target One. But there's Riverholt. A settlement in the western mountains. Two coastal towns. And at least two more I didn't have clearance for."
"They have better intel than we do," I said, the cold realization dawning. "They've been at this for decades. They probably know where every convergence-marked kid is."
"We have to warn them," I said, pushing to my feet. "Riverholt. The others. We have to coordinate. Now."
"And you expect them to believe us?" Ironwood scoffed. "Intelligence from a confessed cultist? A warning of an attack we can't prove?"
"Then we make them believe," I said, my voice harder than I intended. "We send delegations. We share our training. We share Elara. We build the continental alliance we've been talking about. We just... do it in six weeks."
It was insane. It was impossible. But doing nothing was a death sentence.
That night, there were six of us on the rooftop. Me, Kaela, Lysara, Torren, Zara, Elara. And, sitting at the edge of the circle, her knees drawn to her chest, Mira.
Zara had been the one to invite her. "You ran," she'd said. "You warned us. You're one of us now, whether you like it or not."
Mira looked like she was about to be sick. "I... I helped plan the attack that killed your people. I don't... I don't deserve this."
"None of us 'deserve' to be here," Elara said, her voice quiet. "We're here because we chose to fight instead of surrendering. You just made the same choice. That's all that matters."
"Six weeks," Lysara said, her voice soft in the dark. "To build a continental defense network. With no resources. No authority. The statistical probability of success is..."
"Don't," Kaela said, her voice flat. "I don't want to know."
"Probably wise," Lysara agreed.
I looked out over our sleeping village. In six weeks, it could all be ash. Or... or it could be the capital of a real resistance.
"Takeshi would have run," I said, the thought coming unbidden. "He... he would have seen the odds. He would have just... tried to protect the people he could touch."
"But you're not Takeshi," Mira said, her voice startlingly clear. "Takeshi was... he was a normal man. You're... not. Your capabilities are different. That means your responsibilities are different, too."
She was right. Takeshi was limited. I wasn't.
"Then we do it," I said, the choice solidifying, heavy as stone. "We build the alliance. We warn them all. We try to save everyone we can."
"And when we fail?" Torren asked, his voice small.
"We carry it," I said, looking at him. "And we keep going. Like always."
The war wasn't a regional skirmish anymore. The Harvest was coming. We had six weeks to stop it.