The gates of Stonegate groaned as they swung open, the sound carrying like a slow dirge through the chill morning air. My pack bit into my shoulders with the familiar weight of mail, rations, and tools, while the spear in my hand grounded me with its steady presence. The badge against my chest felt colder than steel should, as if the rune etched into it was already tugging me away from the warmth I was leaving behind.
The stones of the road stretched before me, leading to Fort Darrow, to the unknown, and every step forward carried with it a heaviness that drills and discipline had not prepared me for. Behind me were friends I would not see again soon, maybe never, and as much as I tried to stand tall, the silence in my chest echoed louder than the thud of boots on dirt.
The last few days at Stonegate blurred together in memory, sharp and vivid in places, softer in others.
It had begun with routine. The quartermaster had handed me tasks with his usual gruff indifference: get my kit inspected, sharpen my spear, oil my mail, and collect my rations. None of it was worth noting. But for me, every motion felt heavier than it should have.
What made it heavier wasn’t the work but the way my friends looked at me. They never said the words, but I saw it clearly enough. Erik laughed too loudly at his own jokes, his grin stretched wide as if humor alone could hold everything together. Leif drove himself through drills like a man possessed, sweat pouring off him as though he could hammer his fear into the dirt with each strike. Farid gathered every whisper and rumor about Fort Darrow, pressing the scraps of knowledge into my and Leif’s hands with the urgency of someone trying to protect us without admitting it. And Henry… Henry hovered the closest. He checked my straps, counted my rations, and oiled my spear when I forgot. He didn’t say anything either, but his quiet care spoke louder than words.
We were all boys, really, pretending to be soldiers. We’d learned how to square our shoulders, how to mask our feelings, how to make silence pass for strength. But beneath the act, I knew what they felt because I felt it too, worry, fear, the hollow ache of separation. And the strange part was, I noticed it all. I’d caught the quartermaster’s troubled expression when he assigned me my posting, and the tight anger in Lieutenant Clifford’s voice the day he’d spoken with me. At the time, I hadn’t thought much of it, but now I wondered: was it my Awakening, a sharpened skill, or something in my stats that had honed my senses? Whatever the cause, my eyes saw more than before.
Yet even with that clarity, one thing remained missing: I still didn’t remember my death. Sixteen here, nineteen there, and somehow this sixteen-year-old version of me felt steadier, more aware, than the nineteen-year-old ever had. Maybe that was maturity, or maybe just the necessity of survival. Either way, I did what I knew best: I buried myself in drills.
It was easier that way, easier to lose myself in sweat and rhythm than dwell on leaving.
The last three days at Stonegate gave me just enough time to test myself. To feel how awakening had changed me, how my body moved, how the skills breathed through me, how my mind had sharpened in ways it never had before.
My lungs burned, my muscles ached, but they never gave out. Fatigue came slower, lighter, as if something deep inside had rewired itself. Every motion felt like proof that I wasn’t the same boy who had stumbled into Stonegate.And the skills… they weren’t just words on a status sheet anymore. They lived.
[Applied Military Theory (UC)] whispered constantly at the edges of my thoughts. Every ration line, every shouted order, every circuit of the yard became more than punishment or routine, they became lessons. I saw how drills turned chaos into order, how formations weren’t just exercises but the bones of discipline itself. It was intoxicating, as though I’d been handed the eyes of a general. For the first time, I felt like a scholar of war.
When my legs began to ache, I focused and called up [Soldier’s March (C)]. The strain eased as the skill settled into me, my steps evening out, my breathing falling into a steady rhythm. I could feel it working, carrying me forward where I might have faltered.
In drills, when my grip tightened on the spear, I triggered [Defensive Spearplay (C)]. My arms steadied instantly, the wild edge of my thrusts smoothing into precise, practiced strikes. Each movement locked into the squad’s rhythm until our line felt like a single wall of steel.
On watch, I let [Guard Duty (C)] take hold. It was as if the air itself carried warnings, and within a span of ten meters around me, I felt every shift, more keenly than sight alone could give. It was exhausting to maintain, but while it lasted, it was like having a sixth sense for danger.
And then there was [Minor Restoration (C)]. A quiet blessing. It mended bruises, steadied breath, and let mana seep back into me like water into dry soil. But even it demanded balance, the more I leaned on it to heal the body, the slower mana returned, and when I focused on restoring mana, the wounds closed more gradually.
Three days of drills had shown me more than my endurance. They revealed the shape of my new self, body and mind alike.
The strangest part was how the skills lingered even when I wasn’t actively calling on them. They hummed quietly in the background, drawing just enough mana to keep themselves ready, the way sitting upright all day slowly wears at your body. But the moment I invoked them fully, the drain surged, like shifting from sitting to walking, then to running. Mana burned faster, fatigue set in sharper, and eventually, I had to stop, rest, and let it restore.
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As of now, I could hold [Soldier’s March (C)] for about three hours before my mana bottomed out and the steadiness collapsed, leaving me to march on raw legs. [Defensive Spearplay (C)] pushed me harder, draining so quickly that after barely an hour my arms still swung the spear, but without the precision the skill gave me. [Guard Duty (C)] stretched the farthest, a little more than four hours before the sharpened awareness snapped shut, leaving only my ordinary senses.
When the time ran out, it wasn’t my body that failed me, I could still move, fight, breathe. It was my mana that emptied, and once the well was dry, the skills simply would not answer. I think this is why the army paid so much attention to training: because when mana gave out, only muscle, discipline, and drilled reflexes remained.
Each skill carried its own rhythm of strain and collapse, and I was only beginning to learn how far I could push before the emptiness claimed me.
I hadn’t had enough time to explore the general skills in depth, but three in particular surfaced often: [Memory Recall (UC)], [Basic Rune Theory (C)], and [Mana Sensitivity (C)]. [Memory Recall] kept my studies sharp, letting me hold onto every diagram and line of text I read. The other two had become almost second nature whenever I turned my attention to the badge, letting me probe its structure with an awareness that felt sharper than sight.
That badge became my nightly obsession. When I wasn’t drilling or forcing myself through routines, I poured myself into studying it, a puzzle I could lose myself in, another way to keep myself distracted from the thought of leaving.
At first glance, the rune etched into the steel was simple: a circle broken by three sharp cuts pointing inward. Around it, thinner lines webbed outward, some terminating in diamond-shaped nodes, others curling into sharp hooks. One groove ran deeper than the rest, the channel where my blood had bound the badge to me.
I studied it with the mind of both the engineering student I had once been and
the rune apprentice I had become. The manuals and carving drills of Rune Ops had taught me that circles were not shapes but rates, channels that governed absorption. Triangles were ratios, anchors that fixed flow. A crooked line wasted mana, a shallow cut bled it dry. The diamonds here must have been anchors, stabilizing the spell. The circle? A container, maybe, or a cycle. The cuts? Likely channels for mana, tied to my lifeblood.But what did it measure? Just the simple binary of life and death? Or something more? Pulse? Mana reserves? Vital health? Could an officer look at my badge and know not just that I was alive, but how strong I was, how close to collapse? The thought unsettled me.
The material fascinated me too. The base looked like ordinary steel, but the etching shimmered faintly when I turned it in the lamplight. Not paint, not normal metal. Silver, perhaps, or something rarer, mithril, quicksilver alloy, maybe even a compound designed for mana conductivity. Back on Earth, I’d have thought of copper traces on a circuit board. Here, maybe mana flowed through metal in much the same way.
I knew I couldn’t replicate it, not without tools or knowledge I didn’t have, but that wasn’t the point. The structure alone was worth studying. If the army issued one to every soldier, it couldn’t be impossibly complex. Efficient, practical, reliable, that was the kind of design that fascinated me most.
Each night I turned the badge in my hands, chasing answers I couldn’t yet reach. And each dawn the bugle pulled me back to reality: drills, orders, preparations. Fascination had its place, but the army never paused for curiosity. By the fourth morning, reflection and routine gave way to reality. The march had come.
Beyond the gates, the road was already swallowed by chaos. Wagons lined in a ragged column, drivers shouting as they lashed down barrels of grain and bundles of spears. Horses stamped and snorted, their breath steaming in the cold, while scouts tightened saddles and cavalrymen checked straps. Sergeants’ voices cut through it all, barking names and orders until the air itself seemed to vibrate with discipline.
It was nothing like the caravan I had first arrived with, barely fifteen soldiers and a few wagons straggling through the gates, nor like the six-month trial in the wilds with forty-five recruits and two squads of city guards. This felt different. Bigger. A proper army caravan: one lieutenant, nearly a dozen sergeants, and two hundred privates moving as if part of a single body. Nearly thirty wagons rumbled in the column, piled with grain sacks, barrels of salted meat, crates of spears, coils of rope, and the endless clutter an army needed to keep marching. Some of us were new recruits, green and wide-eyed, but most were veterans of the supply corps, men and women who knew how to keep the kingdom’s lifeline grinding forward.
We were herded into ranks, new recruits stiff in our uniforms, trying to look like soldiers instead of boys with spears. Then the officer appeared, a man on a gray stallion, cloak whipping in the wind. His bronze insignia gleamed: A Lieutenant, commanding officer for the march.
“Listen well,” his voice cut through the clamor. “This caravan will take three weeks to reach Fort Darrow. It is not a parade. It is not training. It is a lifeline, supplies, reinforcements, and every one of you is part of its protection. You will obey your sergeants. You will not break formation. Fail, and you endanger us all.”
He let the words hang, then pointed down the road. “March discipline keeps men alive. Near Stonegate, the threats will be light, Tier Ones at most, that is when the new privates will be tested in the outer line. The veterans will watch you, but they will not carry you.”
His gaze hardened. “The deeper we march, the greater the danger. As we near Fort Darrow, you will face Tier Two beasts. Then, the formation changes. Veterans will take the outer ring, and recruits will fall back to the wagons. Your duty then is not glory, it is to guard supplies, hold formation, and survive. Do not mistake mercy for weakness. The army does not waste men lightly.”
A ripple of unease passed through the recruits, but no one spoke. Then a stocky sergeant stepped forward, a slate under his arm. He ran a finger down the list and began to bark names. One by one, men stepped out of the line until ten of us stood together. Halfway down, my name was called. I stepped forward.
The sergeant looked us over with a hard stare.
“I am Sergeant Colburn,” he said. “You’re my squad for this march. You’ll answer to me for the length of the journey.” He lifted the slate. “Ten-man squads, you’ll rotate through duties: wagon escort, camp setup, water runs, night watch. Every task a private must know, you’ll do. First week, we take the third supply wagon. Eyes open, mouths shut, spears steady.”
He barked us into position. Scouts were already moving into the trees, cavalry trotting ahead, wagons creaking into motion. Dust rose, and the column began to move, two hundred souls bound for a frontier fort whose dangers I could only imagine.
I tightened my grip on the spear. Orders, formations, rotations, this was the rhythm now. No more drills in Stonegate’s yard. I was a private, part of the machine.