They said it was unity.
On each wall in the capital they spread the image - wide scenes showing rows of soldiers stepping forward together, varied emblems sewn into separate uniforms, eyes fixed on one distant line. Not just one nation this time, the sign declared. Kingdoms joined because danger touched them all alike. Atop the Crown Hall stairs, the Chancellor stayed standing, voice carrying through crowds for nearly twelve breaths worth of minutes, talking kinship, linked lands, how everyone strong enough must guard what ancestors made.
White was what he had on every single moment.
Below, the people were not pale. Shades of ash and earth moved there, bundled in layers long past their years, footwear mended too often with string. Back near where he waited, Kael shifted beside a wagon that blocked part of what lay ahead, catching sounds that drifted above heads instead of reaching them. Togetherness. He tasted the term as if chewing something hard found on a path. That kind of bond rarely asked for so much buried ground.
Twenty-two years old. Down at the grain mills every morning, east part of town - the place folks named the Low Quarter, though the ground wasn't lower, just poorer, quieter, worn thinner. Spent all his days in those two rooms above the machinery where his father once coughed through long shifts until the air ruined him. Peaceful by nature, never tangled with outsiders, didn't know borders much; left the city so rarely it felt like a rumor more than habit.
That next day, notices appeared on boards across all districts. They named it conscription - yet wrote selection instead; Kael found that wording oddly graceful for something so blunt. From the Low Quarter, Millside, River Docks, and Eastern Farmlands, each man old enough to labor had three days to reach the registry hall. Not one line spoke of the Garden Districts. Nothing about the Merchant Ring showed up. The university district stayed quiet too, likely because the Chancellor's son remained in bed.
From his spot at the mill window, Kael kept still while recruiters walked the Low Quarter lanes. Not one lingered long before jotting a name - no pause, no thought. Names went into their books like rain hits stone. Fast. Without choice. Even those who leaned on walls just to stay upright got written down. Two hobbled men, nearly falling, were waved forward too. A voice said work would be found. It always was.
A flour-dusted baker called Maret sat by the window, gray-haired and still. Her eyes stayed fixed on the view outside, much like his. Quiet stretched between them, unbroken for some time.
"They always take the ones who can't afford to say no," she said finally.
Kael stayed silent. No reply came because there wasn't one.
That night, he tightened a wobbly plank in the floor - the same one that once snagged his toe when walking without light. Odd choice for a final evening of freedom, perhaps. Still, making the space neater seemed right, just in case another person arrived later to stay.
On day three, someone shouted out his name.
From the square beneath came the sound, clear as bone, long before boots hit the doorstep - names spilled into air, one after another, his nestled right there, pinned between Sorin who hauled crates at dawn and some lad from the gristmill he couldn't quite place. Stillness took him then. Nailed plank stayed put now. Dust had vanished from corners. Mother gone since spring thaw three turns back, father vanishing just past that. Nobody waited to speak last words, nobody close enough anyway, a relief maybe, unless silence like that carved deeper than any blade could.
He went downstairs.
He reported.
That reply never came. A question had simply not been put to him.