Chapter 17: Squad Bitter Dawn
I wake to the metallic screech of Aria slamming her footlocker shut, the sound slicing through the barracks’ predawn hush like a blade. She stands over it, a rigid silhouette against the grey light seeping through the high window, her violet eyes burning with contained fury. She shoves past the new recruit—Liyah, I think her name is—already nervously folding a uniform onto Aria’s old bunk.
“Ren’s squad,” Aria hisses at me, her voice a low, vibrating thing. Her fingers are white-knuckled around the worn leather of her diamond sword’s hilt. “They’re shipping me to Ren Kurogane. Two years. They must be determined to get me expelled.”
Liyah freezes, a pair of socks clutched in her hand, her face pale with terror at the tempest she’s suddenly adjacent to.
“Aria, come on,” I say, swinging my legs out of bed. The stone floor is ice under my bare feet. “It can’t be that bad. He’s… he’s a good soldier.”
“He’s a blunt instrument with a martyr complex and the emotional range of a stone,” she snaps, throwing a final bundle of belts into the locker before kicking it again. It groans in protest. “This is punitive. I know it is. Guardian candidate or not, they’ve always hated how I question things.” She turns on her heel, her movements sharp with rage. “I’m going to the placement office.”
“Wait, let me—”
But she’s already storming out. I scramble into my leggings and boots, throwing a jacket over my sleep shirt, and hurry after her, offering Liyah a weak, apologetic smile as I pass. The poor girl looks like she’s praying to become part of the wall.
The administrative wing at dawn is a tomb of polished black wood and dusty sunlight. Aria doesn’t knock; she throws open the door to the externship coordinator’s office, the impact echoing in the narrow hall.
The man behind the desk—Gareth, his nameplate says—looks up with the weary expression of someone who has spent decades being yelled at by over-trained, under-disciplined young Protectors. “Santoro. Early.”
“This placement is a mistake,” Aria says, her voice tightly controlled, which makes it somehow more dangerous. “I request a transfer. The Northern Warden’s border patrol. The Capital’s diplomatic guard. Anything else.”
Gareth sighs, setting down his pen. “Request denied. All slots are filled. Kurogane’s squad was the only one with an opening for your specialization.”
“Specialization? I’m a Guardian candidate! My specialization is whatever the hell it needs to be! I should be able to pick!”
“You are a fifth-year extern that had to repeat her first year,” Gareth says flatly. “You go where the need is. And the need is in Squad Seven.”
“The need is a dumping ground for cadets you want to break!” The control snaps. Aria plants her hands on his desk, leaning forward. “Ren’s squad is always empty because no one stays! They wash out or transfer the second their mandatory two years are up! Everyone knows it! Only two permanent members, and that’s because they’re probably as twisted as he is!”
I hover in the doorway, a cold knot in my stomach. I’d heard the rumors, the whispered jokes about Ren’s “suicide squad.” But hearing Aria scream them in this quiet office made them real, and terrifying.
Gareth’s expression doesn’t change. “The turnover is due to the squad’s high-operations tempo in the Border Marches, not the squad leader’s conduct. Your performance will be evaluated on merit. Not on your comfort.”
“This isn’t about comfort, you parchment-pushing fossil! It’s about purpose! He’ll bury me in scut work or get me killed on some hopeless—”
“Santoro!” Gareth’s voice cracks like a whip. “Another word and I’ll mark you for insubordination. The assignment stands. You report to the squad barracks by 0800. Dismissed.”
For a second, I think Aria might actually draw her sword. The energy in the room coils, tight and lethal. Then, with a sound of pure disgust, she shoves herself away from the desk, spinning toward the door. I catch her arm as she storms past.
“Aria, stop. Please.”
She glares at me, but the fire in her eyes is banked by a layer of something worse: betrayal. She allows me to steer her away, back down the silent corridor. Her breaths are ragged. “They’re sidelining me,” she mutters, more to herself than to me. “Sticking me with the Academy’s pariah so I can’t interfere with whatever they’re planning.”
I don’t know who ‘they’ are. The Capital? The Guardian hierarchy? I just squeeze her arm. “Let’s get your things. I’ll help you move in.”
The squad barracks squatted just beyond the Academy’s western wall, a low, functional building of the same dark stone, looking less like a fortress and more like a large, gloomy shed. A single, frost-bitten training ring lay beside it. It felt isolated, a world away from the bustling academy courtyards.
Aria shoved the heavy door open with her shoulder, the bag she was carrying thudding to the floor inside.
The common room was warm, lit by a stubborn hearth and cluttered in a lived-in way our sterile academy dormitories never were. Weapons racks were overloaded, maps were pinned to every spare bit of wall, and a worn sofa was piled with mismatched blankets.
Two women looked up from a stone table where they were cleaning weapon parts. I recognized one immediately: Alex Cross, from the solstice dance years ago. She still wore a beanie over her black hair, a red-striped shirt under her leathers. The other was beautiful, with caramel-colored hair tied in a messy braid and tan skin glowing in the firelight. She had a row of polished arrows laid out before her like a surgeon’s tools.
“New blood,” Cross said, her tone dry but not unkind. She didn’t get up. “Right on time. We were taking bets on whether you’d show or desert before breakfast.”
The other woman, Hannah, I presumed, offered a warmer, though cautious, smile. “Ignore her. You must be Aria. I’m Hannah. This is Alex. We heard you were coming.” Her eyes flicked to me. “And you brought a friend.”
“This is Arisa,” Aria said, her voice still tight. “She’s just helping me lug my ego up here.”
I managed a small wave. “Hi.”
“Hey,” Cross said, appraising me with a quick glance. “You’re the kid who hangs around the training yard with Ren at midnight. Nice footwork. For an academy brat.”
My face flushed. I hadn’t known we were watched.
Hannah rolled her eyes. “Be nice, Alex.” To us, she said, “The bunk room’s through there. Six beds. The one by the window is yours, Ren’s room is at the end of the hall. He’s out on patrol until tonight.” She said it matter-of-factly, but I saw Aria’s jaw clench at the mention of his name.
We carried Aria’s things into the bunk room. It was cramped, military-neat where occupied, barren on the two empty beds. The air smelled of old wood, oiled leather, and a faint, unfamiliar perfume—Hannah’s, probably. There was no privacy, just as Aria had said. Just thin screens between the cots and a shared, spartan bathroom.
As we unpacked, the reality of it settled over me like a fog. These two women, closer to Ren’s age, lived here. With him. They shared this cramped, intimate space. They saw him daily, not as an intimidating instructor, but as a squad leader. They knew his routines, his moods. A hot, irrational spike of jealousy pricked me, followed immediately by shame. What right did I have? He was my mentor. A closed book. I see her like a little sister.
“You’re always welcome here, Arisa,” Hannah said from the doorway later, as I prepared to leave. She meant it kindly. “It’s quiet when the boys aren’t around making a mess. Sometimes too quiet.”
Cross snorted from the common room. “Speak for yourself. I enjoy the peace.”
Aria grunted, not looking up from violently stuffing her spare uniforms into a footlocker. “Don’t encourage her. She needs to focus on her own path.”
My path. Right.
Back at the academy, the day unfolded with a numb normalcy. Lectures on territorial law, a rune-etching practical where I, again, deliberately muted my lines. Lunch with Tsubaki, who chattered excitedly about the upcoming Military Police “shadow experience,” a week-long immersion where fourth-years followed active MPs to see their work.
“We get to observe real tribunal preliminaries,” she said, her eyes bright. “And traffic control at the Aethelgard border crossing! It’s all about procedure and maintaining the peace. It’s what the system is for, you know?”
I nodded, pushing food around my plate. It sounded like a slow death by paperwork.
Our shadow experience began the next morning. We were paired with a senior MP, a severe woman named Vorseth, and spent eight hours in a subterranean recording chamber beneath the Capital annex, observing the processing of low-level shadow-taint violations. The air was stale, recycled. The walls were soundproofed grey plaster. A man, his eyes flickering with unnatural darkness, pleaded for leniency for possessing an unregistered shard of obsidian. His voice was a monotonous drone. Vorseth dictated notes into a crystal. Tsubaki hung on every word, her own notebook filling with meticulous script.
My job was to fetch cups of bitter, lukewarm khav.
The next day was spent cataloging evidence lockers—bundles of withered herbs, rusted daggers humming with spent magic, journals filled with crazed scrawls. The dust made me sneeze. Tsubaki, gloves on, handled each item with reverent care, discussing chain-of-custody protocols with Vorseth.
On the third day, we stood for six hours in a sterile white room, watching through a one-way mirror as MP interrogators questioned a merchant suspected of smuggling dream-silk. Their voices were calm, repetitive. The merchant’s answers blurred into a meaningless hum. Tsubaki whispered theories about his body language. I counted the cracks in the floor tiles. Each one felt like a bar on a cage.
This was the future Tsubaki saw for us. A vital, orderly, important future within the walls. A future of rules and containment and clean hands.
And all I could think about was the scent of cold air and pine needles, the feel of a real scythe haft in my hands, the crackle of unseen energy in the Border Marches where Ren’s squad operated. Of Aria, somewhere in that gloomy barracks, gearing up for a life that was dangerous and raw and real. Of two women who lived in that space with him, who were part of his real world, not just his clandestine lessons.
The jealousy was gone, burned away by a deeper, colder understanding.
As I stood in that sterile observation room, watching Tsubaki’s fascinated face lit by the cold glow of the interrogation lamp, I knew.
I could never do this.
I finished my Military Police shadowing rotation with a feeling of relief so profound it left me dizzy. The sterile rooms, the drone of procedure, the containment—it all fell away as I stepped back into the open academy air, which suddenly tasted sweet and sharp with possibility. Tsubaki chattered about evidentiary protocol all the way back to our dorm, her eyes shining with a purpose I couldn’t fathom.
Next would be my Outerland experience, the two-week observation with an active border squad. Tsubaki didn’t seem eager when she received her assignment for the outer patrol, her nose wrinkling as she read the deployment order, she’d groaned, tossing the parchment on her desk. “I’ll ruin my boots.”
Before that, however, we were funneled through a brutal gauntlet of fourth-year academic exams. Rune application tests required etching stability under simulated magical feedback, my hand aching from forcing the silvery ink into acceptable, mediocre patterns. Advanced Shadow Beast Anatomy involved identifying weak points on shifting, holographic projections that stank of ozone and wet fur. Battle Theory essays demanded strategies for hypothetical breaches, and every morning, Drill Instructor Borros ran us through stricter, more complex formation drills in the courtyard mud.
Tsubaki voiced her complaints on a daily basis. “My brain is soup,” she’d moan, collapsing onto her bed after an eight-hour study session. “Who cares about the subcutaneous fat layer of a Dread-Crawler? I just need to know where to shoot it.” I just counted down the days, each one a stone dropped into a well, leading me closer to the deep, dark water I craved.
Two months later, I stood in the assignment hall, a cold slip of parchment trembling in my hand. I stared at the inked words until they blurred.
Extern Observation: Squad Seven. Leader: Ren Kurogane. Participants: Arisa Kashikoi & Tsubaki Haru. Duration: 14 days.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a wild, trapped bird suddenly seeing an open sky. Ren’s group. Two weeks of shadowing Aria, Alex, Hannah, and him. The barracks, the patrols, the real work. I could barely contain the leap in my chest, pressing the parchment flat against my thigh to stop my hands from shaking.
Tsubaki peered over my shoulder. “Oh. Well. That’s… intense,” she said, her voice lacking its usual surety. She looked at her own slip. “We get to see Aria, at least.”
The first morning of the observation, I was up an hour before dawn. I’d already completed my five-mile run and a full cycle of stretches by the time Tsubaki’s alarm bleated into the grey silence. She groaned, burying her face in her pillow. “It’s still night,” she mumbled.
“It’s go time,” I said, already lacing my boots, my body humming with a clean, sharp energy.
She was groggy and very much not excited, sipping khav with a look of profound betrayal as I paced by the door. We headed out to the squad barracks just as the bruised twilight began to soften. Aria was waiting for us outside, a sharp smile on her face. She looked different here—more real, her leathers worn and her hair tied back practically. “Took you long enough,” she said, but her eyes were bright. “Ready to see how the other half lives?”
Inside, Hannah was meticulously checking the fletching on a new batch of arrows, her brow furrowed in concentration. Alex was half-dressed, yawning as she pulled on a boot. “The cadets arrive,” Alex said, her voice gravelly with sleep. “Don’t stand there looking pretty. Gear up. Drills start in ten.”
Morning drills were a brutal, beautiful symphony of coordinated violence. Hannah’s arrows thudded into distant targets with a soft, final thwump. Alex flowed through sword forms with a lazy, deceptive grace. Aria’s diamond sword became a blinding arc of reflected dawn light. Tsubaki and I watched, then were ordered to join basic conditioning laps around the training ring, our lungs burning in the thin, cold air.
After drills, sweaty and panting, Alex threw an arm around my shoulders. “So, the fun part. Patrol duty this afternoon. Shift starts at thirteen-hundred.”
“How long?” Tsubaki asked, wiping her brow.
“Ten hours, give or take, on our assigned days,” Hannah said, not looking up from oiling her bowstring. “If we’re lucky. Sometimes it’s twelve. Then maybe four to crash before the next one, we usually do about 3 shifts a week.”
Tsubaki paled. “Ten hours? Out there?”
“Out there is where the job is, kid,” Alex said, grinning. “Keeps things interesting.” She launched into a story about a patrol where Ren had gotten so annoyed with a whining recruit that he’d made him carry a full-grown Slag-Boar carcass back to base. “For ‘training,’ he said.” Hannah chuckled, adding details. For a moment, it was easy. Just five people goofing off in the weak morning sun, the scent of pine and damp earth cutting through the smell of sweat.
The heavy door to the barracks slammed open.
Ren stood there, a dark outline against the brightening day. His gaze swept over us—Alex leaning against the weapon rack, Hannah sitting on the steps, Aria polishing her blade, Tsubaki and me catching our breath. The casual warmth evaporated, replaced by a sudden, frigid stillness.
“Why,” he said, his voice low and dangerously even, “are you not in formation for scouting detail?”
Alex pushed off the rack, unfazed. “Briefing wasn’t for another twenty, boss.”
“The border doesn’t run on a schedule, Cross.” His eyes, like chips of flint, landed on each of us. “I expect my squad ready to move at the briefing time, not using it as a goddamn suggestion.” His focus settled on Tsubaki and me. “And you two. You are shadows. You observe. You do not speak unless addressed. You do not engage under any circumstances. Is that terminally clear?” His gaze locked with mine, a knowing, intense pressure behind it. He was speaking to the group, but the command was for me alone.
We scrambled. Within minutes, we were geared in light scout leathers, moving in a silent file into the dense, ancient woods beyond the academy’s wards. Ren led, a silent specter. Hannah ghosted ahead as point, her steps making no sound. Alex took the rear, her usual nonchalance replaced by a predatory alertness. Aria kept herself between us and Ren, her posture rigid with old resentment. The air grew colder, the light filtering through the canopy turning a sickly green.
The forest was too quiet.
We entered a clearing where the ground was choked with black, thorny vines that seemed to pulse faintly. Ren held up a closed fist. We froze. He pointed. At the edge of the clearing, shadows pooled and congealed, pulling themselves up from the leaf litter like tar rising from a well. They formed into sleek, low-slung shapes with too many jointed legs and jaws that unhinged silently. Dread-Crawlers. Three of them.
Tsubaki’s breath hitched behind me, a sharp, desperate sound. The closest beast’s head snapped toward us. Its featureless face seemed to smell her fear. It detached from the pack, flowing toward us with a skittering, boneless speed.
“Hold formation,” Ren hissed, his own blade now a whisper of darkness in his hand.
But Tsubaki was breaking. A high, thin whine escaped her lips. She took a stumbling step back. The Crawler surged, a blur of edged shadow. It was going for her throat.
I didn’t think.
My body moved before the command finished in my mind. I shoved Tsubaki hard, sending her sprawling sideways as my scythe—came up in a brutal, horizontal arc. It wasn’t a killing slice, but the weighted sheath of the scythe connected with the creature’s side with a solid, wet thud. The impact jarred my arms, a shock of real, violent feedback.
The creature shrieked, a sound like tearing metal, and writhed away. In that moment, Hannah’s arrow took it in what should have been an eye, pinning it to a tree. Ren and Alex were already moving, a coordinated blur of darkness and steel that dispatched the remaining two beasts with terrifying efficiency.
The clearing fell silent again, save for the dying gurgle of the shadow-beast and Tsubaki’s ragged, muffled sobs from where she lay on the ground. Ren stood over the pinned creature, wrenching Hannah’s arrow free with a sickening crunch. He didn’t look at me. “Haru. On your feet.” His voice held no room for comfort. “Kashikoi. You were told observation only.”
“It was going to kill her,” I said, my own voice surprisingly steady. My blood was singing, a fierce, hot torrent in my veins.
“It was,” he acknowledged, finally turning. His eyes assessed me, not with anger, but with a cold, stark appraisal. “And you reacted. Now you’ve drawn a line. The next time you break orders, you’d better be sure.” He glanced at Tsubaki, who was now standing, trembling, her face ashen with shame and residual terror. “Back to base. Now.”
The walk back was made in utter silence. Tsubaki walked ahead of me, her shoulders hunched, never looking back. Hannah and Alex flanked her, their earlier humor gone, replaced by a professional, pitying distance. Aria kept glancing at me, her violet eyes wide with a mix of shock and something like pride.
But I didn’t feel pride. I felt awake. The fear-scent in the air, the jarring impact of the scythe against that unnatural flesh, the clean, decisive violence of Ren and Alex—it wasn’t a nightmare. It was a language I understood deeper than runes, more visceral than theory. The cold air in my lungs, the pine sap smell mixing with the rot of dying shadow-stuff, the steady, ready beat of my own heart—this was where I made sense.
Back at the barracks, Tsubaki went straight to the bunk room and drew the thin screen around her cot. She didn’t speak. The distance she’d been cultivating for months solidified into an impenetrable wall.
I stood in the common room, the adrenaline slowly leaching away, leaving a perfect, calm clarity in its wake. Ren was cleaning his blade by the hearth, not looking at anyone. Alex caught my eye from across the room. She gave me a slow, deliberate nod, her lips quirking in a shadow of her earlier grin.
I was in my element.