They took him out before dawn.
A guard opened the door, called out a sector number, and waited in the doorway without further explanation. Kael sat on the edge of the bed, blinked twice, and put on his boots. His head felt heavier than normal and his throat was dry, but the guard didn't seem like the kind of person who accepted comments about it.
The hallway was empty. His footsteps echoed on the stone as he followed the guard through corridors he hadn't yet finished memorizing. Outside, the air was cold and sharp. Kael felt it in his lungs before his eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness.
They led him to a side courtyard where other youths were already lined up. No one spoke. Some rubbed their arms. Others simply stared ahead with the patience of those who have learned that asking questions is useless.
Kael took his place at the end of the line.
They began to walk.
A few minutes later, he noticed that the ground sloped downward and that the salty smell of the port was left behind. He'd been running a fever for two days, and his body reminded him with every step: his feet a little heavier than they should be, the horizon with that slight tremor that didn't come from the wind. He tripped on a stone he didn't see. He grabbed the shoulder of the recruit next to him before falling. The boy didn't look at him. He kept walking with his head down.
Kael straightened up and continued.
Around him, a long line of youths advanced in silence. Some looked at the ground. Others straight ahead, their eyes fixed on nothing in particular. None spoke.
'Who are these people?'
The version they had given most of them was well-known.
An organization with structure, with resources, with space for those who proved they deserved it. Protection for those who had nothing outside their walls. A future for those who had been born without one. The speech changed depending on who delivered it, but the promise was always the same: there was something better inside than outside.
What no one mentioned was how most of them arrived.
Families with debts they couldn't repay. Villages where recruiters appeared with a list and few alternatives. Kids who had made the mistake of catching the attention of someone with enough authority to do something about it. They hadn't chosen to be here. They had ended up here, which was different.
Kael walked among them with two days of fever on him and without having slept well on either.
They went down the slope and the field appeared at the bottom of the valley.
It was wide and open, with the ground so trampled that no grass remained. On the sides, low wooden structures roofed with straw darkened by humidity. In the center, the circuit.
Kael saw it from above before going down.
Hundreds of youths moving through the obstacles: wooden walls, water ditches, ropes stretched over mud, horizontal bars at a height that allowed no errors. At every point, an instructor was shouting, not to encourage but to mark who was falling behind. The sound came mixed from the valley, voices and thuds and the mud absorbing falls.
One of the boys lost his grip on one of the upper bars. He fell backward from three meters, and the impact was heard all the way to where Kael was. The boy lay on the ground with his arms spread out and his mouth moving soundlessly. His left leg was bent at an angle it shouldn't be. Those coming behind him circled him or passed by without stopping, and the circuit continued its rhythm as if the ground had simply absorbed one more thing.
Kael stopped looking and went down with the group.
All the training he had done until that moment—the circuits at dawn with Torin, the repetitions to failure, the routines that ached two days later—was nothing like this. That prepared the body. What he had before him was testing how much it could endure before breaking.
A man separated from the group of instructors and walked toward the newcomers.
He moved slowly, with his hands behind his back and no hurry. He stopped in front of the line and scanned them from left to right, expressionless, as if counting something that wasn't necessarily people. He let several seconds pass before speaking.
"One rule," he said, in a low voice that needed no volume to carry. "He who falls behind does not finish." A pause. "Three minutes for water."
No one asked what not finishing meant.
Kael looked at the water they put in his hands. He drank it slowly.
Then he looked at the circuit.
Then his hands.
Since leaving the mansion, he hadn't truly trained. The stronghold was about movement, not sustained effort. Everything Torin had built in months of routines had been silently diluted, and until that moment, he hadn't had reason to notice.
'They're not going to kill me.'
An internal pause.
'...Yes. Yes, they would.'
He finished the water.
The first hundred meters were manageable.
Kael positioned himself in the center of the group, neither ahead nor behind. Firm ground, constant pace. His body responded, though with less margin than he would have liked.
The first obstacle was a wooden wall. He climbed it. His hands trembled at the top, but he crossed.
The second was a water ditch. He entered, and his body reacted before his thoughts: his lungs closing, his muscles contracting, the instinct to get out. He got out. Gasping, with the water soaking his clothes.
The third was a horizontal bar. His fingers gripped the cold, slick metal, muddied by previous hands. He crossed to the other side.
At the fourth obstacle, his legs stopped responding.
It wasn't dramatic. His knees gave out without warning, and the ground came before he could do anything about it. Kael lay in the mud with his lungs burning and his head spinning. The circuit continued around him: footsteps, breaths, the distant sound of someone who also wasn't making it but was still moving.
He placed his palm on the ground.
'Get up.'
He pushed. His knees didn't fully extend.
'Get up.'
He couldn't.
A hand appeared from above.
Kael followed it with his eyes to the face of the boy extending it. Fifteen years old, perhaps. Short, dark hair, direct expression.
"Come on. Take my hand. Not much left."
"What are you doing?" A tense voice from behind. "We have to hurry."
"Leave him," said another voice, flatter. "He won't make it."
The boy didn't turn his head towards either of them.
"Come on," he repeated, his hand still there.
Kael took it.
The boy pulled up with more force than his size suggested. Kael stood on unstable knees, mud on his palms.
"Move," the boy said, and he was already walking.
Kael moved.
He stumbled twice more.
The second time he fell to his knees, and the boy pulled his arm without saying anything and without changing his pace. The circuit ended at some point Kael didn't clearly register, only the instructor's shout announcing the end and the fact that his legs could finally stop moving.
He stayed bent over with his hands on his knees, breathing.
"To your posts!" The instructor's voice cut the air. "To sleep! Tomorrow will be worse!"
No one celebrated.
Kael looked at the boy who had given him a hand. The boy was already signaling others with a nod, as if he knew exactly where he was going.
"You're new, aren't you?" the boy said. "Come with us."
A girl cut across before Kael could answer.
"Hey. Why are you inviting him? We're a group. We didn't agree to bring anyone else in."
"We have a free bed."
"That's not the point."
"We have a free bed," the boy repeated, with the same tone.
The girl looked Kael up and down. She exhaled through her nose.
"Whatever."
The room had four beds pushed together, just enough space to move between them, and a narrow window through which the cold entered effortlessly. The floorboards creaked with every step. The walls were bare stone, and there was nothing inside that wasn't strictly necessary.
Kael sat on the edge of the free bed. His muscles accepted the rest before he had finished deciding.
The boy turned to him.
"I'm Darik." He pointed to the other boy, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and an expression that offered nothing. "That's Marcus."
Marcus looked at Kael. He said nothing. He assessed him for a second and returned to looking straight ahead.
"She's Alesandra." Darik paused barely noticeably. "Even though she has that furious temper, she's a good person."
"Who are you calling furious?"
The answer came before Darik had finished closing his mouth. Alesandra hadn't raised her voice, but she didn't need to.
Darik pointed without answering her.
"And she is Eryndra."
On the bed at the back, a girl was sitting bolt upright looking out the window. She didn't turn her head when her name was called. She only lowered her eyes to Kael for a moment, measured him, and returned to the window.
"I'm Kael."
Alesandra looked at him with a frown.
"Why are you shaking?"
Kael opened his mouth.
"He's probably scared," Marcus said from the wall, without moving. "Like everyone when we get here."
Alesandra frowned.
"He doesn't look scared."
"Well, he is shaking."
"I see that, that's why I asked."
Marcus didn't answer. He looked ahead again.
Darik sat on the edge of his bed and took off his boots with the quiet exhaustion of someone who has already learned not to fight with fatigue.
"The first day is the worst," he said.
"The instructor said tomorrow would be worse," Kael replied.
"It will be," Eryndra said, without taking her eyes off the window.
Silence.
Alesandra lay back on her bed, looking at the ceiling.
Marcus closed his eyes.
Darik turned off the lantern.
And in the darkness of the room, with the cold coming through the narrow window and his muscles still protesting, Kael looked at the plank ceiling and thought that at some point between the circuit and this room, something had changed.
He didn't know yet if it was good or bad.
But it was different.