Debriefing Room 7 Same morning.
The garrison lights ran too bright along the corridors, bleaching color out of uniforms and skin. Orders lived in the walls here; grief had nowhere to sit.
Kaelen pushed through Security Wing C as the scanner gates hummed, retinal, pulse sigil, prosthetic handshake. The machine approved the limb. Kaelen did not.
A clerk waited inside, posture stiff as paperwork. Mordain from Psy Ops sat in the second chair, tablet ready. Both stood when Kaelen entered.
"Sit."
They obeyed. The door sealed with a clean hiss that cut the hallway away.
Caellum sat across the table. Alive. Whole enough. The prosthetic hummed faintly where alloy met skin, a neat line from mid thigh down. His uniform still carried sterilizer and smoke. He had not slept.
Kaelen studied him. Then his file. A heartbeat left him. No air in that record: four years with zero inactive days; logs that should not fit a calendar; spar notes that read like field after action; discipline curves climbing like a wall; pain flags that tripped until testers learned to stop wasting flags. The numbers spoke of a dogged, almost pathological dedication, a man doing work a unit should be doing.
He shelved the impression and looked at the boy, not the ledger.
"Tell me what happened."
Caellum's eyes were the color Kaelen remembered. Blue, cold river under thaw.
"The unit was deployed to Zone E twelve for harvest escort. Standard parameters," he said, voice pre weighted. "At 0600 we lost contact with forward scout Zackariah Asperum. Signal interference. We advanced under fog conditions."
"The scout," the clerk said, "being your brother."
A fractional pause.
"Yes." Caellum's voice shook at the edge of the word. The tone instantly corrected.
"At 0615 the fog manifested mass. Visuals collapsed. Movement at zero distance. By 0616 half the squad was gone, and the count kept falling. No biometrics, no bodies. Absence."
"An aberration," Mordain said.
"Unknown classification," Caellum replied. "Sound deprivation, then flesh erasure. We attempted retreat. I fell. When I woke, the fog was gone. The ground was quiet."
Mordain did not look up from the slate. "Survival vector," he asked, gravel in a tin.
"Ground failure underfoot. Buried under debris. Field pressure decreased as it moved on."
"The debris," the clerk interrupted again, flat, "being the remains of your unit."
"Yes." He did not blink.
Kaelen watched his hands. Steady until the word quiet, and again at unit.
He kept the questions pinned to the perimeter of his fifty, forty nine gone by end of day. The rest he already had from the plaza briefings: the Motherswomb had returned with its mouth open and no children inside. Not one block. Not one cohort. The entire Harvest. Thousands rendered to lists and tags. He could still see the long tables under canvas, the stampers working until the pads dried, officials' cuffs blacked by names, and the way the city tried to stand on legs that did not want to hold. Forty nine tags in his bag; thousands on the tables. One man's ledger, a city's.
"I found you under thirty meters of collapsed terrain," Kaelen said.
"Yes, sir."
"You carried forty nine tags to the surface."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I survived." Silence held.
"You did all of this without a unit."
"I did what was required."
Kaelen let silence stretch until it bit. He had a different ledger behind his eyes: the Maw opening like a mouth; his seal lattice biting down; anchor spears humming until the field sheared and died, too late for the thousands. He had gone in when the first alarms sounded, cut the pressure with a technique, burned the fog to ground, palms blistered under gauntlets. He was the one who dug this one body, this Caellum, out of a cairn of uniforms and earth. You arrive late once; you spend the rest of your career arriving early.
"Protocol would have you return to Psy Ops for evaluation," he said at last.
"I am evaluated," Caellum answered, flat.
"You're broken, boy."
"No, sir. Measured."
The room held its breath. Kaelen flicked two fingers toward the door. "Mordain. Out."
The latch sighed. Mordain left. The door sealed again.
Kaelen leaned on the table; the prosthetic at his knee gave a patient whirr. "Command wants a hero story. I want you useful. That means alive and working."
"I can work."
"You can barely stand."
"Even if I could not stand, sir, I would crawl. If I could not crawl, I would dig. With my teeth if that was required."
Not defiance. Geometry. Stubborn like a winch. The columns had never shown a burst, only increments, the kind that survives logistics, not lightning.
"You're going to the Seventh," he said. "You're the one non-mage there. No special treatment, no private yard. You will run what they run and carry what they carry. You pass or fail beside them."
A small tick in Caellum's jaw; not complaint, acceptance.
"Understood."
Caellum reached for the slate, then paused, eyes lifting. "Sir, I need access to the Special Zone. And supervised access to the breathing archives, advanced methods. I have outgrown the Maw's."
Kaelen did not answer at once. He let the request sit where the air could weigh it. Special Zone meant heat and hazard; advanced breathing meant turning pain into math, and sometimes, ash. Grant it and he might burn. Deny it and he will hunt edges in darker rooms. He signed.
"You will get a Zone slot," Kaelen said at last. "Supervised. You do not set foot past the second ring without clearance. Second ring: the shields stop forgiving mistakes. First ring gravity chamber only. Archives access under supervision. You burn yourself, I will sign the paperwork and still make you run."
"Yes, sir."
Kaelen slid the authorization across. Caellum's gaze took in the stamp and came back steady. For a heartbeat Kaelen tried to see something blinding in him and saw only what had been there in every log entry: persistence. He trusted that more than brightness.
"You report to the Seventh's yard at 0600," he said, straightening. "Arrive early this time."
"Understood."
"And one more condition," Kaelen added. "You train with them. No exemptions; keep your feet with theirs."
"Understood," Caellum repeated.
He rose. Alloy breathed against fabric. The salute was precise, unreadable. The door hissed open.
"Asperum," Kaelen called as he stepped through. "When you find a way to breathe that does not hurt, tell me."
Without turning: "I will."
The door sealed again. The empty chair kept its shape a while longer. Kaelen told the room, and himself, that a dedicated boy with merciless numbers was exactly what the Seventh needed. He checked the time. You arrive late once. After that, you arrive early.