Chapter 11: Casualty Calculus
The silence after her words wasn’t empty. It was thick, layered with the unsaid things that hung in the air between them—the memory of his hand on her leg in the infirmary, the forgotten leaf, the shared, unspoken understanding that this was different. He hadn’t let go. He sat on the edge of her narrow bed, her back against his chest, his arms a firm band around her middle. They were both fully clothed, boots on the floor, but the intimacy was staggering. It had nothing to do with bodies and everything to do with the raw, exposed nerve of the moment.
He could feel the frantic rabbit-beat of her heart against his forearm. She could feel the slow, deliberate expansion of his ribs with each breath against her spine.
“It’s basically a suicide run. The odds are not in our favor.” His voice was low, a bare vibration against her back. It wasn’t fear. It was a statistic. A tactical assessment delivered into the darkening room.
She turned her head slightly, her cheek brushing the rough fabric of his shirt. The lantern light carved the planes of his face into sharp relief, all shadow and unyielding line. “Promise me something.” Her whisper was hoarse.
His chin moved a fraction against her hair. “What?”
“That you will try your fucking damn hardest to come back.”
He didn’t answer immediately. The arms around her tightened, just for a second, a convulsive grip that stole her breath. Then it eased, returning to that deliberate, steady pressure.
“Tch.” The sound was soft, almost lost. “That’s a stupid promise.”
“I know.”
“Trying is the baseline. It doesn’t mean anything out there.”
“It means something in here,” she said, pressing a fist lightly against her own sternum, her knuckles knocking against his arm.
He was silent for so long she thought he’d dismissed her. Then, his voice, quieter still: “I don’t make promises I can’t guarantee.”
“I’m not asking for a guarantee. I’m asking for the trying.” She shifted, turning more fully within the circle of his arms to look at him. His grey eyes were close, darker in the low light, holding something she couldn’t name. “Promise me the trying, Levi. That’s all.”
He held her gaze. The grim set of his mouth softened, just a fraction. A reluctant, almost imperceptible surrender. “Alright.” A single, curt nod. “I promise the trying.”
It was enough. It was everything. The tension in her shoulders, the one she hadn’t even realized she was carrying, dissolved. She sank back against him, and this time his posture eased too, his head dipping so his forehead rested against the crown of her head. They stayed like that as the lantern burned lower, watching the maps on the wall fade into vague shapes in the gloom.
He left before dawn. There was no grand farewell. One moment he was a solid warmth at her back, the next the mattress shifted as he rose. She heard the soft rustle of his gear being gathered, the click of buckles. She kept her eyes closed, feigning sleep. She felt him pause by the bed. A moment of absolute stillness. Then the whisper of calloused fingertips brushing a stray strand of hair from her forehead, so fleeting she might have dreamed it.
The door opened and closed with a quiet, definitive click.
The room was suddenly, unbearably cold.
Two days until mobilization. Sage’s world became a calculus of pain and distance. Levi’s final objective echoed in her head: Walk to the mess hall by the time we leave.
The crutches were a betrayal. She used them only for the long, exhausting trips to the physio room where Klaus put her through agonizing strength exercises. The rest of the time, she practiced falling.
She would push up from her bed or the chair, take two steps, three, and let her legs give out. She learned to crumple, to roll, to absorb the impact with her shoulders and hips. The bruises bloomed across her skin like strange, painful flowers. Petra scolded her. Sage ignored her.
On the eve of the expedition, she made her attempt. The corridor outside her room stretched, a vast, polished wood canyon. She left the crutches leaning against her doorframe. Her heart was a drum against her ribs. She placed a hand on the wall, took a breath that smelled of pine soap and old stone, and pushed off.
One step. Two. The muscles in her thighs burned, but held. She focused on the sensation Klaus had drilled into her: Heel, roll, toe. Heel, roll, toe. The rhythm was clumsy, slow. She passed three doors. Her right knee trembled, threatening to buckle inward. She paused, corrected it, breathed through the tremor.
A passing scout, a young man she didn’t know, stared openly. She ignored him, her world narrowed to the ten feet of floor in front of her.
Halfway there, a wave of dizziness hit. The walls seemed to lean in. She swayed, her hand slapping against the stone to steady herself. Her legs shook violently, the weakness screaming for her to quit. She thought of the stone on her stomach. Correct, don’t force. She waited, head down, until the world righted itself.
The archway to the mess hall was a mirage that slowly solidified. The sounds of cutlery and low chatter grew louder. The smell of stew and bread, usually mundane, was suddenly intoxicating. Victory.
She didn’t make a grand entrance. She shuffled the last few steps, her hand never leaving the wall, and collapsed onto the first wooden bench just inside the doorway, sweat-drenched and trembling. A few scouts at a nearby table glanced over, their conversations dipping. She couldn’t muster a triumphant smile. She just sat, head bowed, dragging air into her lungs, feeling the glorious, searing protest of her body.
Petra appeared from the kitchen, a towel in her hands. She saw Sage, saw the empty space around her where crutches should have been. Her eyes went wide. She didn’t say a word. She just walked over, poured a cup of water from a pitcher, and set it in front of Sage with a soft thud.
“He’s in the strategy room with Erwin and Hange,” Petra said quietly, following Sage’s gaze as it swept the room. “Final briefing. They leave at first light.”
Sage nodded, gulping the water. It tasted better than anything she’d ever had.
The morning was a sharp, metallic grey. A fine, cold mist clung to the cobblestones of the courtyard. Sage stood in her uniform at the window of her room, her knuckles white on the stone sill. She was dressed. She was standing. It was all she could do.
Below, the Survey Corps assembled with a grim, familiar efficiency. Rows of horses stamped and snorted, their breath pluming in the damp air. Wagons laden with supplies creaked. The sounds were muted by the glass, a eerie pantomime of departure.
She picked him out instantly. A smaller figure moving with absolute purpose through the organized chaos. He checked harnesses, inspected gear, his voice inaudible but his posture issuing clear, terse commands. He looked like he always did: a figure carved from ice and resolve.
Erwin sat atop his horse, a tall, still statue, his voice a low rumble that carried even through the window. Hange Zoe bounced on their heels, gesturing animatedly to a squad leader.
Sage’s legs ached, a deep, foundational throb. She pressed her forehead against the cool glass.
Levi finished his inspection and mounted his horse in one fluid motion. He gathered his reins, and then, as if pulled by a wire, his head turned. His eyes lifted from the chaotic courtyard and found her window. The distance was too great to see his expression, but the focus was unmistakable. A single, pointed acknowledgment.
He held her gaze for three full seconds. Then he turned, said something to the rider beside him, and nudged his horse forward.
The gates groaned open. The column began to move, a slow, coiled snake exiting the belly of the castle. The sound of hooves on stone became a rolling thunder that vibrated in Sage’s bones. She watched until the last wagon, the last scout, disappeared into the grey mist beyond the gate.
The courtyard was empty. Quiet.
She looked down at her own two feet, planted firmly on the floor. The objective was met. He was gone.
The silence in the room was no longer intimate. It was vast. It was waiting.
She turned from the window, her steps slow but steady, and walked to the small table. The ghost book lay there, next to the smooth river stone. She picked up the stone, its weight familiar and solid in her palm. She carried it to the bed, sat, and placed it on her stomach. She breathed, watching it rise and fall.
The trying was hers now, too.
The trying was hers now, too. The days settled into a brittle routine of agonizing physio, silent meals, and staring at maps she couldn’t affect. She carried the river stone in her pocket, its smooth weight a cold comfort. The emptiness of the castle was a physical pressure, every echo a reminder of the missing company.
On the third afternoon, a distant rumble shook the windowpane in its frame.
It wasn’t thunder. The sound was wrong—deeper, more structural, a grinding roar that seemed to come up through the stone floors. Sage froze, a cold wire of instinct tightening down her spine. Shouts erupted in the courtyard, confused and sharp, before being drowned by a second, closer impact.
The wall. Something had hit the outer wall.
Klaus burst into her room, his face ash-grey. “Breach! South-east quadrant! It’s inside!”
The world telescoped into a series of fractured, adrenaline-bright images. The hallway was a river of panicked cadets and support staff flowing toward the interior vaults. Sage spun the other way, toward the barracks. Her legs, which still protested a simple stair, answered the screaming need in her brain with a raw, forgotten power.
She ran. The pain was a distant, irrelevant thrum beneath the sheer electric terror fueling her muscles. She slammed into the women’s barracks, a space of empty bunks and lingering scent of oil and leather. Her gear locker was a taunt. There was no time for the harness, no time for the blades.
Her eyes snapped to the small emergency kit on her bedpost. She tore it open, spilling contents. She snatched the flare gun, shoved the canisters into her pocket, and grabbed her canteen from the nightstand. That was it.
She turned and sprinted for the stables, her breath sawing in her lungs. The courtyard was chaos. A chunk of the southern battlement was gone, dust and debris boiling into the air. She didn’t look to see what had made the hole. She saw Petra, already mounted, screaming her name.
Her horse, a steady mare named Ember, was wide-eyed and skittish. Sage didn’t think. She grabbed the pommel, put a foot in the stirrup, and hauled herself up in a movement made of pure memory and fear. The muscle in her bad leg shrieked, then went numb. She landed in the saddle, fumbling for the reins.
“Scatter! Regroup at the old mill!” Erwin’s voice, booming across the din, was the last clear order. Then the tide of horses and panic broke, streaming out through the main gate and every secondary exit. Sage kicked Ember forward, letting the current of bodies carry her out and into the green blur of the forest.
They ran until the sounds of collapse and screams faded into the hammer of hooves and the rush of wind. The group splintered at every fork, every game trail. An hour later, Sage slowed Ember to a heaving walk, her own body trembling with spent adrenaline and burgeoning pain. She looked around. Only two other riders emerged from the trees behind her.
Petra. And Eld.
They pulled up in a small clearing, the horses lathered and blowing. The silence was immediate and absolute. No gear creaked. No blades rattled. Petra had a short sword at her hip. Eld had nothing but the clothes he wore. Sage touched the flare gun, heavy in her belt, and the single canteen.
Eld scanned the empty woods, his usual composure cracked. “What do we do?”
Sage uncorked the canteen, took a small swallow, and handed it to Petra. Her mouth was dust. “I have no idea.”
Petra drank, passed it to Eld. “No gear. No signals. Just… this.”
“I have flares,” Sage said, patting her pocket. The canisters felt laughably inadequate. “For whatever that’s worth.”
Eld wiped his mouth, staring back the way they’d come. “The mill’s fifteen miles east. If that’s even still the rally point.” He looked at Sage’s legs, at the way she subtly favored one side in the saddle. “Can you make that?”
She met his gaze, the ghost of Levi’s voice in her ear. The trying is the baseline. “I don’t have a choice,” she said, and took the canteen back. It was half empty.
It was half empty. The reality of that, of the empty woods and their empty hands, settled over them like a physical weight. They moved east, walking the horses to save their strength, the only sounds the crunch of leaves underfoot and the labored breathing of their animals. Every shadow between the trees seemed to hold a different, sharper silence.
Sage’s leg was a lit fuse of pain burning down to the bone. Each step Ember took sent a jolt through her spine. She gripped the saddle horn, her knuckles bleaching white, and focused on the dappled light on the path ahead. Think about the pressure in your feet, she heard his voice, clinical and clear. She couldn’t feel her feet. She could only feel the deep, wrong ache in her thigh.
“We’re being too loud,” Eld muttered, glancing back for the tenth time. “We’re leaving a trail a blind man could follow.”
“You got a better idea?” Petra snapped, her voice frayed. “We can’t fly.”
“We could split up.”
“And die alone? Brilliant.”
The bickering was a thin veneer over a thick, pooling fear. Sage didn’t contribute. She was measuring the light, watching it bleed from gold to a dull, watery green. Dusk was coming. The forest at night, without fire, without walls, was a different kind of titan.
Ember stumbled. Sage lurched forward, a cry tearing from her throat as her bad leg took the strain of righting herself. The horse let out a pained whicker, her head drooping.
“She’s done,” Petra said, her anger dissolving into grim assessment. “She’s favoring her left fore.”
They dismounted in a small, rocky clearing beside a thin creek. Sage’s legs buckled the moment her weight hit the ground. She caught herself on a moss-slick boulder, biting back a scream as the muscles in her thigh seized into a solid, unforgiving knot. She slid down the rock to the damp earth, breathing in sharp, animal gasps.
Petra examined Ember’s leg. “Stone bruise, at least. Maybe a tendon.” She looked at Sage, then at the fading light. “We’re not making the mill.”
Eld scanned the perimeter, his shoulders tense. “So we hole up here? With nothing?”
“We have water.” Sage forced the words out through clenched teeth, gesturing to the creek. “And we’re not in the open.”
It was a pitiful list of advantages. They hobbled the horses near the creek to drink. The shadows between the trees deepened, swallowing detail, turning the world into a patchwork of vague, looming shapes. The temperature dropped. Sage’s uniform, damp with sweat, clung to her skin with a chill that seeped inward.
They didn’t light a fire. They sat with their backs to the large boulder, passing the canteen in silence. The forest night awoke around them—the scuttle of unseen things in the leaf litter, the distant, haunting call of an owl. Every sound was a potential footfall. Every shift in the wind carried a phantom scent of rot and earth.
Sage’s hand found the smooth stone in her pocket. She rolled it between her fingers, the action a silent mantra. Correct, don’t force. But there was nothing to correct here. They were just three people waiting to be found, by friend or by horror.
A branch cracked, loud as a gunshot, thirty yards to their left.
All three froze. Eld slowly reached for Petra’s sword. Petra’s breath hitched. Sage’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drum counting down seconds. They heard it then—a low, wet, grinding sound. It was the sound of something massive moving through undergrowth, of saplings snapping under an unimaginable weight.
It wasn’t a horse. It wasn’t human.
The trying. The stupid, baseline trying.
Her hand left the stone and dove into her pocket. Her fingers closed not on the standard-issue red flare, but on the other one. The one wrapped in a strip of oilcloth, kept separate. The one he’d pressed into her palm the day after she’d stood, his expression utterly bored. ‘For when your spectacular ideas inevitably catch up to you. Don’t waste it.’
She ripped the cloth away. In the near-darkness, the canister was a matte black, but she knew the color. Bright neon pink. Not used for any other signal.
She slammed it into the flare gun. The click of the breach locking was obscenely loud.
“What are you doing?” Eld hissed, his eyes wide with panic.
“I have a flare that’s only meant to signal Levi.” She said it calmly, her own voice surprising her.
“But he’s out on that mission with Hange…” Petra reminded her, her whisper strained with disbelief.
“I know.” Sage stood up, her leg screaming in protest. She braced herself against the cold rock, raising the pistol toward a gap in the canopy where the first stars pricked the twilight. “But they should have been on their way back now. If he’s anywhere near here… he’ll see it.”
She pulled the trigger.
The report was a deafening crump that shattered the forest’s quiet. A searing line of pink light ripped into the sky, trailing spirals of brilliant, chemical smoke. It burned an afterimage into their vision, a jagged scar of impossible color against the deepening blue. It climbed, and climbed, a tiny, defiant sun.
Then it burst.
The light was blinding. The entire clearing, the trees, their faces, were washed in a surreal, electric magenta glow. The shadows it cast were sharp and alien. For three eternal seconds, the world was pink and stark and utterly exposed.
The light died. The brilliant arc faded to a falling, smoking ember. The darkness that rushed back in was thicker, heavier, more complete than before. They were blind now, their night vision scorched away.
And they had just announced their location to everything in the woods.
The silence that followed was absolute. It was the silence of held breath, of waiting for the answer. Sage lowered the hot flare gun, her ears ringing. The afterglow of the pink flare still danced behind her eyes.
Somewhere, far to the north, a matching point of pink light stabbed into the sky. It was distant, a mere pinprick on the horizon, but it burned with the same specific, ludicrous color.
It was an answer.
The echo of the second flare’s report rolled over the distant hills like faint thunder. Then, nothing. Just the ringing in their ears and the overwhelming, vulnerable dark.
“He answered you.” Eld said in shock, his voice barely a breath.
“Yeah. He did.” She whispered before sinking back to the ground and resting her head and back against the rock. The adrenaline bled out of her, leaving her body a wrung-out, aching sack. Her bad leg throbbed in time with her heartbeat.
“He’ll be sprinting if not flying his way over here. Whichever he thinks is faster to get to her.” Petra whispered, a thread of awe in her words. She kept her eyes on the black woods where the northern flare had died.
Sage closed her eyes. She didn’t feel triumphant. She felt exposed. The pink light had been a scream in the silent world, and now every hidden thing knew where they were. She fumbled the river stone from her pocket, pressing its cool, smooth surface against her sweating forehead.
They waited.
Time dissolved into a raw collection of sensations: the chill of the ground seeping through trousers, the cramp in her thigh hardening into a knot of pure agony, the dry scrape of each breath. Eld shifted, his every rustle sounding catastrophic. Petra’s hand stayed on the hilt of her sword.
Then, a new sound. Not the grotesque grinding from before. This was a rhythmic, fast, mechanical hiss-thump. It was the sound of gas cylinders firing and anchors finding purchase, moving at a speed that defied the forest’s tangle. It was coming from the north, cutting a direct, violent line toward their clearing.
It was too fast for a ground approach. He was in the trees.
The sound stopped abruptly at the clearing’s edge. Silence for three heartbeats. Then a figure dropped from the canopy, landing in a crouch that absorbed the impact without a sound. He straightened up, his grey eyes catching the faint starlight, scanning the scene in one swift, brutal assessment.
Levi.
He looked… used. His uniform was spattered with dark, drying stains that weren’t all mud. A long, shallow cut traced his jawline. His gaze skipped over Eld, over Petra, and locked onto Sage crumpled against the rock. Something in his face tightened, a microscopic flicker that might have been relief or fury.
“Report.” The single word was a crack of ice.
Eld jolted. “South-east wall breach, sir. We evacuated with the scatter order. No gear. Sage’s horse is lame. We heard a large hostile to the west just before she fired the flare.”
Levi’s eyes never left Sage. “The flare I gave you.”
It wasn’t a question. She managed a nod, her throat too tight for words.
He took two steps forward, his boots silent on the loam. He crouched in front of her, his movements efficient, devoid of gentleness. He looked at her leg, at the way it was bent at an awkward, painful angle. “Did you run on it?”
She nodded again.
“Idiot.” He reached out, his fingers pressing firmly into the seized muscle of her thigh. The pain was instant and blinding. She gasped, arching off the rock. “Breathe through it,” he commanded, his voice low. He worked the muscle with a ruthless, knowing pressure, finding the precise center of the knot. It felt like being torn apart.
Tears leaked from her clenched eyes. Then, with a final, excruciating release, the muscle softened under his hand. The pain receded to a deep, manageable ache. She sagged, panting.
“Can you stand?” he asked, withdrawing his hand.
“I just did.”
“Not what I asked.” He rose, offering her his hand. It wasn’t an offer of comfort. It was a tool. She took it, his grip closing around hers like a vice, and he pulled her up. Her leg held, trembling but obedient.
He turned to Petra and Eld. “Hange’s squad is two miles north, circling back. The thing that hit the wall is dead. There are no others in this immediate sector.” He said it like he’d personally checked every square foot of forest. He probably had. “We move. Now.”
“The horse—” Petra started.
“Is a liability. Leave it.” He cut her off. He looked at Sage. “You’re with me. Petra, Eld, keep pace. If you fall behind, you get left.”
He didn’t wait for agreement. He moved to the edge of the clearing, pulling a fresh anchor from his hip. He looked back, a silhouette against the lesser dark of the sky. “Try to keep up, Renn.”
Then he fired the anchor. The mechanism hissed, the hook shot upward, and he was yanked into the blackness of the trees, disappearing.
Sage didn’t hesitate. She limped to where Petra and Eld stood, took Petra’s short sword, and shoved it into her own belt. She grabbed the canteen, looped it over her shoulder. “Let’s go,” she said, and followed the sound of his gear into the dark.
Traveling by ODM gear in the total dark, without her own harness, meant being cargo. Levi would zip ahead, find a perch, and return, his arm locking around her waist to haul her to the next point. It was not gentle. It was a series of jarring lifts and rapid, swinging traverses where she clung to his shoulders, her face buried in the rough cloth of his jacket to avoid whipping branches.
She could smell the forest on him—pine sap, damp earth, and beneath it, the cold, metallic scent of freshly cleaned steel and something coppery. Blood. His or someone else’s, she didn’t know.
Between carries, he moved on the ground, a silent, rapid shadow. She pushed her body to follow, every step a negotiation, every breath a burn. Eld and Petra crashed along behind them, sounding unbearably loud.
After twenty minutes of this brutal rhythm, he stopped in a small gully. He held up a closed fist. Absolute silence. They listened. Only the wind.
He turned to her. In the deep shadow, his expression was unreadable. “Why that flare?” His voice was low, for her alone.
“You said not to waste it.”
“I also said it was for your spectacular ideas. Was this one of those?”
“It was the only one I had left.”
He was quiet for a moment. “The mission was a shitshow. We were already retreating when we saw the first breach smoke from the castle.” He paused, as if deciding how much to say. “Then I saw your firework.”
He didn’t say what he did next. He didn’t have to. The image was clear: him breaking from the retreat, vectoring toward that stupid pink star while the world fell apart.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He made a dismissive sound in his throat. “Don’t. We’re not safe.” He looked past her, into the woods. “That sound you heard. Describe it.”
She did. The low, wet grinding. The snap of trees.
His jaw tightened. “Not a standard titan. Something else.” He shook his head, a minute movement. “We need to keep moving. Can you keep going?”
She thought of the stone, of balancing, of correcting. She nodded.
He reached out, not for her hand, but to adjust the canteen strap digging into her shoulder. His knuckles brushed her collarbone. A fleeting, accidental contact. “Then let’s finish this.”