You open your eyes to the sound of reveille echoing across the base at 0530, sharp, familiar, comforting.
You are three days old, but the memories are already there: the weight of a dress uniform on your tiny shoulders, the smell of gun oil and boot polish, the way your mother's medals clinked when she leaned over the crib to kiss your forehead.
Fort Arden, Republic of Valdria, year 117 of the Continental Calendar.
Your family, the Rourke lineage, has produced flag officers for nine consecutive generations. Your mother is Brigadier General Valeria Rourke, commander of the 7th Armored Division. Your father is Rear Admiral Elias Rourke, currently CO of the 3rd Carrier Strike Group. Both of them are on deployment right now, so the first face you see is your grandmother, retired General of the Army Selena Rourke, five stars still gleaming on her collar even though she's supposedly "retired."
She looks down at you in the hospital bassinet and mutters, "Welcome to the war, little one. You're late for formation."
By age four you can already know how to salute with the proper angle, how to fold a flag into a perfect triangle, and that "yes, ma'am" and "yes, sir" are the only acceptable answers.
Your two little sisters arrive soon after:
- Aurora ("Rory"), two years younger than you, born with Father's sea-green eyes and Mother's complete inability to sit still. She sleeps with a plastic tank under her pillow and can name every armored vehicle in the Valdrian inventory before she can spell her own name.
- Cassandra ("Cassie"), four years younger, quiet, watchful, already correcting the enlisted nanny on the proper way to shine boots when she's barely walking.
The house you grow up in is on Generals' Row: polished hardwood floors, walls lined with campaign maps, dress swords, and framed photos of ancestors in every uniform from cavalry greatcoats to modern powered armor. Dinner conversation is 60 % tactics, 30 % politics, 10 % actual food. You learn to cut your steak with a ka-bar because that's what's on the table.
Every birthday is celebrated with a 21-gun salute (literal, because the base artillery battery insists).
Your christening gift was a custom-fitted dress uniform in infant size.
Your first words were "roger that" and "affirmative."
When you turn seven, Grandmother sits all three of you down and says, "The Rourke name is not a shield. It's a target painted on your back. Earn it, or the service will bury you in it."
You spend summers at the Joint Forces Youth Academy: obstacle courses, small-arms familiarization, survival training. Rory beats everyone at land navigation. Cassie can field-strip a rifle blindfolded. You? You're the one who starts organizing the other kids into fire teams before the instructors even blow the whistle.
At night the three of you share a room with glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling arranged in actual constellations used for celestial navigation. Rory whispers battle plans against imaginary enemies. Cassie recites the Articles of War like bedtime stories. You lie there listening to both of them breathe and feel something ancient and proud settle in your bones.
You are ten when Mother comes home from the Eastern Front with a new scar across her cheek and the Silver Star pinned to her chest. She kneels so she's eye-level with you and says, "The family needs its next generation ready. Are you?"
You snap your small heels together and answer, "Born ready, ma'am."
She smiles for the first time in months.
The path is already laid out in front of you like tank tracks across mud:
- Junior Military College at 14
- Officer Candidate School at 18
- First command at 23 if you're good, 21 if you're exceptional
And somewhere down that road, a war with your name on it.
But for now you are just a kid in a too-big camouflage jacket, walking between your two little sisters across the parade ground at sunset, the three of you practicing close-order drill while the flag comes down and the bugle plays retreat.
Rory is calling cadence.
Cassie is swinging her arms exactly forty-five degrees.
You are in the center, counting steps, keeping them in perfect time.
The Rourke legacy marches on, three small pairs of boots at a time.
And deep in your chest, something fierce and calm and ancient answers the rhythm:
This is home.
This is purpose.
This is the life you were reborn to lead.