Chapter 2: The Humiliation Protocol
The hum of the classroom’s rune-lit walls seemed to mock the throbbing in my legs. Each carved bone desk felt like a judgment, a reminder of Protectors who hadn’t been “worthless scrap.” I kept my eyes down, tracing the whorls in the obsidian floor, avoiding the space at the front where Ren stood. His silence was a pressure all its own.
Aria’s shoulder brushed mine, a tiny, deliberate contact. “Breathe,” she murmured, so low only I could hear it. “History is a quiet hour. Use it.”
But there was no quiet with him in the room. The air itself felt charged, waiting. The holographic projector at the head of the class flickered, its pale blue light casting a sickly glow on the empty podium. The history instructor was late.
The door exploded inward.
The crash of boot against stone was like a gunshot in the silent chamber. Borros filled the doorway, a mountain of simmering fury. His flint-chip eyes scanned the room, searing past rows of startled cadets, and landed on our little cluster in the back with the precision of a targeting laser.
He stormed in, his footsteps echoing like drumbeats of doom.
‘Disgraceful!’ he roared, the word cracking through the room. He didn’t stop until he was at the front, whirling to jab a thick finger directly at me. Every head turned. My cheeks burned. ‘You! Kashikoi! You move like spoiled milk, fight like a concussed kitten, and now I hear you fell asleep during tactical theory!’
The accusation was a lie. I’d been zoning out, yes, my body screaming from the morning’s abuse, but I hadn’t slept. It didn’t matter. Truth was a currency Borros didn’t deal in.
His glare swept from me to Ren, who had gone statue-still beside the podium. ‘And you!’ Borros barked, spittle flying. ‘Letting your squad become this pathetic? First-year Squad Leader Kurogane. Report to the Iron Garden tonight. You’ll train this worthless scrap until she either improves or passes out—whichever comes first.’
Ren’s face morphed. The cool detachment shattered, replaced by a ripple of pure, unvarnished rage. His jaw clenched so tight I heard the muscle pop from my seat. “Are you fucking kidding me?” The words were low, dangerous. “I disciplined my squad members already for that incident. Their laps are still being run. Why is this shit necessary?”
Borros laughed, a harsh, barking sound with no humor. “Because, First Year Squad Leader Ren, you need to learn how to control your subordinates. If I ever have to sit in on that pile of slime again, it’ll be your ass scrubbing the remains off my boots! Do you understand?”
A few nervous giggles escaped from the front row students. Borros’s head snapped toward them, his glare so violent the laughter died instantly, choked off into terrified silence.
Just then, the history instructor—a thin, scholarly man with wire-rimmed glasses—scurried in, his arms full of scrolls. He froze, confusion etched on his face as he took in Borros’s looming presence and Ren’s thunderous expression.
Ren didn’t even look at the instructor. He kept his blazing eyes locked on Borros, but his words were for the room, for everyone to hear. “Apologies, Instructor,” he said, his voice dripping with venom. “This rude barbarian dragged me here so he could order me around. To train one of your…” he paused, letting the word hang in the thick air, “…worthless recruits.”
Worthless.
The word was a physical blow. It stripped me bare, in front of everyone. My hands curled into fists under the desk, nails digging crescent moons into my palms. I could feel Tsubaki stiffen beside me, a coiled spring of outrage. Aria’s breath hitched, then steadied into something slow and deadly. The heat of their anger for me was a small, fierce comfort, but it couldn’t melt the ice flooding my veins.
Borros grunted, seeming satisfied with the public humiliation. He turned on his heel and marched out, the classroom door shuddering on its hinges. Ren cast one last, scathing look over the assembled cadets—a look that lingered on me with a promise of more pain to come—and followed, his exit a study in controlled fury.
The slam of the door echoed in the sudden quiet.
The instructor coughed awkwardly, setting his scrolls down. “Right, well. Let’s… begin with the Third Territorial Schism…”
His voice faded into a distant drone. The weight of what just happened settled over me, crushing. The Iron Garden. Tonight. Trained by Ren. The man who watched me from the trees with impersonal disdain. The man who just called me worthless to a room full of my peers.
A wave of nausea rose, bile bitter at the back of my throat. I slumped forward, my forehead coming to rest on the cool bone of the desk. Defeat wasn’t a big enough word. This was annihilation.
A hand touched my back, gentle. Tsubaki’s. “Hey,” she whispered, her voice thick. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“No, it’s not,” I mumbled into the desk.
On my other side, Aria leaned in, her voice a sharp, cold whisper meant only for us. “If he lays a hand on you with too much cruelty, I will break every bone in his aesthetically pleasing face.”
It was so unexpected, so violently protective, that a choked, half-hysterical sound escaped me. It wasn’t quite a laugh. It was the release of a pressure valve.
I lifted my head. The history lesson played out in flickering holograms—battles and politics I couldn’t focus on. All I could see was the empty space where Ren had stood. All I could feel was the clock ticking down to tonight.
He thought I was worthless. Fine.
But I wasn’t dead yet. And until I was, I could still get back up.
I forced my spine straight, my palms flat on the cool bone desk. The instructor’s droning voice became a needle I tried to thread my focus onto. 5348BE. 624AC. The years were meaningless numbers, a calendar for a world I still didn’t understand.
Aria had explained the factions to us in rushed, whispered sessions in our bunk. The memories bled into the lecture now. “Royal Guards,” the instructor said, pointing to a holographic emblem of a soaring hawk. “Protect the Capital. A prestigious, safe posting.”
Safe. The word tasted like dust. Aria had called it a “gilded cage,” her voice tight. “They protect the politicians who make the rules,” she’d muttered, “not the people who suffer from them.”
The projection shifted to a badge of crossed swords. “Military Police,” the instructor continued. “Keep the peace within territorial borders. Guard the walls. A respectable, moderately safe career path.”
That was Tsubaki’s hopeful path. “It’s realistic,” she’d told me, sketching gun designs on her notepad. “We get to protect something. We get a home.” It was the path for those who weren’t the best, but were good enough. For people like me, it was a distant dream. If I didn’t wash out, if I didn’t end up homeless again here.
Then the hologram dissolved into chaos. It showed a shattered landscape under a bleeding sky, figures silhouetted against a tide of swirling, formless darkness. “The Externals,” the instructor said, a note of grim reverence entering his tone. “The front lines. Beyond the city gates, in every territory. The most dangerous duty, reserved for the elite.”
Aria had simply called them “the meat grinder.” Her eyes had gone distant. “They fight the true shadow beasts,” she’d said. “Not the little wraiths that slip through the cracks. The ancient things. It’s where you go if you’re gifted. Or if you’re desperate to prove something.”
I wasn’t gifted. I was just desperate. The elite. People like Ren. The thought was a cold stone in my gut.
The projection zoomed in on the swirling darkness. It resolved, not into beasts, but into a single figure commanding them. A woman, ethereal and terrible, standing amidst the chaos. Her kimono was woven from night itself, tendrils of shadow licking at her feet. Her eyes were pits of cold, starless black.
“The Battle of the Bleak Plains, against the entity known as Clarissa the Cold One,” the instructor intoned. “One of the darkest conflicts in our history. Her assault slaughtered entire External squads. She vanished a decade ago, believed consumed by the very darkness she commanded.”
A chill, sharp and surgical, traced my spine. The figure on the screen was terrifyingly beautiful. Her power was absolute, a force of nature. She was a queen of nightmare, and she had been erased from the world.
“Her legacy as a mass shadow-killer, however, remains undisputed,” the instructor finished, switching the projection off. The room felt darker without its glow.
Tsubaki leaned over, her whisper barely audible. “Creepy, huh?”
I could only nod, my throat tight. The image of that woman, wrapped in shadow, wouldn’t leave me. It felt familiar in a way that made no sense. It felt like looking at a distorted reflection in a black mirror.
The bell rang, a sharp, crystalline chime that shattered the heavy silence. Chairs scraped. The spell broke.
“See you at dinner?” Tsubaki asked, shouldering her bag.
“Maybe,” I said, the words thick. “I have… the Iron Garden.”
Her face fell. She squeezed my arm, a quick, hard pulse of solidarity, and then was swept away in the current of departing cadets.
Aria lingered. “He can’t actually kill you in there,” she said, her voice devoid of its earlier fire. It was flat, factual. “The Garden’s runes prevent fatal damage. It’s designed for… extreme conditioning.”
“So he can just beat me to the edge of death instead,” I said, staring at the empty front of the room.
“Yes.” She didn’t sugarcoat it. “Use your anger. But don’t let him see your fear. Fear is a fuel he knows how to burn.”
She left me there, alone with the ghost of Clarissa on the back of my eyelids and the looming shadow of Ren waiting for me in the Garden. The walk to the dormitory was a numb trance. I changed into my training gear—simple, durable clothes that could get torn and sweaty—and avoided my own reflection in the polished steel mirror.
Dusk was falling when I found the path to the Iron Garden. It wasn’t a garden. It was a sunken courtyard enclosed by high, spike-topped walls of seamless black iron. The air within was cooler, drier, and smelled of ozone and old sweat. The floor was etched with intricate, glowing silver runes that pulsed with a faint, rhythmic light.
He was already there.
Ren stood in the center, silhouetted against the dying light. He’d changed into loose black training pants and nothing else. The rune-light gleamed on the defined muscles of his back and shoulders, on old, pale scars that mapped a history of violence. He was stretching, his movements fluid and utterly focused.
He didn’t look at me as I stepped through the archway. “You’re late.”
“The lesson ran over,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.
“You think the demons care about your schedule?” He finally turned. His eyes in this light were the color of polished slate. “Strip down to your tank top. You’ll overheat in that.”
The command was casual, clinical. It wasn’t a leer. It was an assessment of equipment. It made it worse.