September 21, 1932
Portez Drazon
The steady beat of drums echoed through the streets of Portez Drazon as militiamen stood in formation beneath fluttering banners while others cleaned and polished their muskets in preparation for the next march. Beyond the town square, rows of tents stretched across the surrounding fields where the Revolutionary Army had established its headquarters.
Inside his personal tent, Cody studied a campaign map spread across a sturdy wooden table. Colored markers and handwritten notes covered its surface, marking supply routes, troop positions, and reports arriving from every sector of the front. Across from him, Colonels Poper and Joshua Bracodo discussed the next phase of the offensive against the British forces, while Parco stood nearby with a tin cup in hand, quietly observing the conversation.
The flap of the tent was suddenly thrown open.
"General Rivera! General Rivera!"
A young messenger stumbled inside, nearly losing his footing as two National Guardsmen rushed in after him.
"Hey! You can't just-"
"What is the meaning of this?" Cody demanded, causing the guards to stop where they stood.
The messenger bent forward, struggling to catch his breath before extending a sealed letter toward Cody with trembling hands.
Cody accepted it, and the moment his eyes fell upon the familiar wax seal, a knot tightened in his stomach. It belonged to Luke, and before he had even broken the seal, he knew the message inside could not possibly be an ordinary dispatch.
Silence settled over the tent as his eyes moved steadily across the page, his brow first tightening in confusion before giving way to disbelief. By the time he reached the final line, the color had drained from his face, leaving behind a grim expression that none of the officers gathered around him had ever seen.
"Sir?" Parco asked cautiously.
Cody lowered the letter and folded it with deliberate care, as though forcing himself to maintain his composure despite whatever he had just read.
"Prepare my horse."
"Sir?"
"Now."
The sharpness in his voice left no room for argument.
"Yes, sir."
Parco hurried out of the tent as Cody followed only a moment later.
The moment he stepped into the camp, his long, purposeful strides caused soldiers to instinctively move aside before him. Conversations gradually fell silent as men caught sight of the expression on their commander's face, and without needing to know what had happened, they wordlessly cleared a path as he passed.
Parco quickly caught up with him.
"General... what happened?"
Cody offered no reply.
Within minutes they arrived at the central operations pavilion, where the senior officers of the Revolutionary Army had gathered around a much larger campaign map to continue planning the offensive.
Poper and Joshua immediately looked up as Cody entered.
"I'll be absent from headquarters for several days," Cody announced. "Poper, continue the advance exactly as planned. Joshua, you'll oversee the supply lines until I return."
The room fell silent as the two brothers exchanged a brief glance.
"Several days, sir?" Poper finally asked.
Joshua frowned. "General, we're in the middle of a campaign."
"I am aware."
"Then what happened?"
Cody met his gaze without hesitation.
"That is not your concern. Carry out your orders."
Neither brother questioned him further.
"Yes, sir."
Without another word, Cody turned and left.
By the time they reached the stables, two horses had already been saddled and prepared. Stablehands hurried aside as Cody mounted in one smooth motion before taking hold of the reins.
Parco climbed onto the second horse, though the growing unease in his chest finally compelled him to ask again.
"Sir... where are we going?"
Cody kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead as he tightened his grip on the reins.
"Vichisburg."
The answer only deepened Parco's confusion, but before he could ask another question, Cody urged his horse forward.
Together they galloped out of Portez Drazon, leaving the camp behind as the steady rhythm of the war drums gradually faded into the distance. For several minutes neither of them spoke, and the only sound accompanying their journey was the pounding of their horses' hooves as they raced across the countryside.
Eventually, Cody reached into his coat and handed the letter to Parco.
"We need to stop the War Tribunal from condemning Kyra."
Parco nearly lost his grip on the reins.
"What?"
"The tribunal has already convened," Cody replied grimly. "If we don't reach Vichisburg in time, they'll pass judgment before she's ever given the chance to defend herself."
Parco quickly read through the letter, his expression changing with every line until he quietly folded it and handed it back.
"This can't be right."
"It is."
Cody tucked the letter back into his coat before urging his horse into an even faster gallop.
As they continued riding, Parco caught a glimpse of Cody's face and, for the first time since they had met, saw genuine fear in his commander's eyes. The sight unsettled him far more than the contents of Luke's letter ever could, because Cody Rivera had faced artillery fire, bayonet charges, and impossible odds without hesitation. If a man like him was afraid, then whatever awaited them in Vichisburg was far worse than anything Parco could imagine.
March 7, 1948
Chesterfield, Orland
The Army Command tent was filled with members of the General Staff as Cody stood over a large campaign map. Above its surface, streams of red and blue magic intertwined, carrying miniature flags that shifted across the battlefield as troop movements were adjusted. A glowing blue fishhook formation slowly pushed deeper into Confederate territory while smaller markers indicated the positions of both Federal and enemy forces.
"General Volkner will continue the assault on Fort Marcos," Cody said as he placed another enchanted flag upon the map, causing it to levitate above the others. "If we can disrupt the fort's operations, we'll be able to link up with General Erwin's forces at Hilltop before the Confederates have time to reorganize."
Before anyone could respond, shouting erupted from outside the tent.
"Hey!"
Several National Guardsmen rushed after a young messenger who forced his way inside before stumbling to a stop directly in front of Cody.
The officers around the table immediately looked up from the map as the guards reached for the messenger again.
"Stand down," Cody ordered firmly, raising a hand before anyone could seize him.
The guards immediately obeyed, stepping back as Cody shifted his attention toward the breathless messenger standing before him.
"Are you alright, son?" Cody asked softly, his tone steady but carrying an underlying tension as the messenger nodded quickly in response.
"Yes, sir… just a minor scuffle," the messenger replied, still catching his breath as he stepped forward and extended the sealed letter.
Cody accepted it without hesitation, but the moment his eyes landed on the handwriting and seal, his expression changed almost imperceptibly at first, as though recognition had struck him before understanding fully settled in. He began reading in silence, his gaze moving faster with each line until it abruptly slowed, his brow tightening as if the words themselves had grown heavier on the page. By the time he reached the middle of the message, his eyes widened slightly, and he instinctively read it again, a second pass as though confirming that what he was seeing had not shifted into something less severe.
His grip on the letter tightened.
"Who sent this?" he asked, looking up sharply at the messenger.
The young man hesitated only a moment before answering, his voice still strained from the struggle outside the tent.
"Minister Rivera, General… Revilla has been placed under martial law, and the Presidential Guard are actively searching for the Vice President. Senate President Hiro Venator has temporarily assumed the responsibilities of the Vice President to ensure the government continues to function."
For a brief moment, the words hung in the air without reaction, as if the tent itself had absorbed them before anyone else could fully process their meaning. Cody did not speak immediately; instead, his gaze dropped back to the letter, reading it once more in a slower, more deliberate motion, as though searching for a line that might suggest misinterpretation or error.
None came.
He lowered the letter slowly, his expression already settling into something far more controlled than shock. The room around him felt tighter now, as though the air itself had adjusted to the weight of what had just been said.
He turned toward Volkner.
"General Volkner, you are to take command of this campaign."
A subtle shift moved through the general staff, unease passing between officers who had grown used to Cody being the constant center of their operations.
"Sir…" Volkner began carefully, choosing his words with restraint. "If you leave this campaign, morale among the troops may suffer."
Cody looked at him directly, unblinking, as if the concern had already been accounted for and set aside.
"I am needed at Revilla."
He stepped forward as he spoke, closing the distance between them until the weight of his presence alone quieted the room. When he reached Volkner, he placed a steady hand on his shoulder, not as reassurance, but as final instruction.
"The war can continue without me for now. What is happening in Revilla cannot."
His gaze shifted across the assembled General Staff until it landed on a familiar figure among them.
"Commander Lawrence," Cody said, his voice steady but absolute, "prepare a regiment. We are marching to Revilla."
A brief silence followed, heavy and immediate, as the weight of the order settled over the room.
Without waiting for a response, Cody turned and stepped out of the tent, the flap falling shut behind him as the staff remained frozen in place, uncertain whether they had just been given an order or witnessed the beginning of a departure that would alter the course of the entire campaign.
March 8th,1948
The golden light of the late afternoon sun stretched across the meeting hall, spilling between marble pillars and thinning into long, angled shadows that made the chamber feel larger than it was, almost hollowed out by expectation rather than architecture. Meika sat in one of the wooden chairs lining the chamber wall, her hands resting loosely in her lap, though her fingers kept shifting as if searching for something to hold onto in a room that offered nothing to anchor her.
The day was not supposed to feel like this.
She had left the academy with Shannah and Mey under the weight of simple plans, something almost ordinary in a time that rarely allowed it, a visit to the field hospital where they would help tend to the wounded and let Mey see what kind of world he was stepping toward. There had been laughter in it earlier, even nervous excitement, the kind that came from pretending the future was something manageable.
That version of the day had ended without ceremony.
Aunt Olivia had arrived without warning, her presence sharp enough to cut through the noise of dismissal bells and hallway chatter, and Meika had been brought here without explanation beyond a quiet instruction that her uncle needed to see her immediately. No urgency had been spoken aloud, but it had lived in every step they took through the government complex.
Now there was only waiting.
Meika's hand drifted to the pendant at her chest, the silver worn smooth by years of unconscious touch. She rolled it gently between her fingers, tracing the engraved shield framed by crossed scrolls, feeling the familiar grooves as though they might answer something she had not yet managed to articulate.
Aunt Jazmin had once explained the emblem in careful detail, speaking not only of history but of burden disguised as purpose, the shield for protection, the scrolls for law and restraint, the two together forming something that demanded balance more than admiration.
But lately, the meaning had begun to shift in ways she could not explain.
Sometimes, when the world grew too loud inside her thoughts, she found herself holding it longer than she realized, as if it were less an object and more a tether between what was certain and what kept slipping out of reach. And beneath that, quieter still, was the thought she never said aloud, that her mother might have once held it the same way when the weight of responsibility stopped feeling symbolic and started feeling lived.
The great doors opened.
The sound carried through the hall with deliberate gravity, and Meika looked up as Ken Drick stepped inside. Even before he reached her, she noticed the way the air around him seemed slightly altered, not in posture or expression alone, but in the restraint of someone holding too many conclusions at once and choosing which ones the world was allowed to see.
Yet when his gaze found her, the shift was immediate. Whatever distance the day had carved into him softened just enough to resemble familiarity again, and he offered a smile that did not fully hide its fatigue but made space for warmth anyway. It was the kind of expression that belonged more to him as her uncle than as the President, though neither role ever truly left him.
He crossed the chamber at an unhurried pace and chose the chair beside her instead of the one opposite, settling close enough that formality no longer had room to stand between them. His attention briefly dropped to her hands, then to the pendant she had not stopped turning.
"You were meant to be at the field hospital today," he said quietly, as though acknowledging a detail already overtaken by something larger.
Meika gave a small nod. "We were. Shannah even packed extra supplies for Mey so he wouldn't faint at the sight of blood."
A faint breath escaped him, something close to amusement but restrained before it could fully form. It did not reach his eyes.
"And yet here you are instead."
"I didn't really have a choice," she said, leaning back slightly as if the memory itself carried weight. "Aunt Olivia said it was important."
Ken Drick did not answer right away. His gaze lingered again on the pendant, longer this time, not as an ornament but as recognition returning to a thought he had not fully acknowledged until now. Something in his expression tightened subtly, not with surprise, but with the quiet awareness of patterns aligning.
"You've been holding onto that more often lately," he said at last.
"It helps me think," Meika admitted, then hesitated as though the next words were less certain. "And remember things I don't always understand."
A pause settled between them, and in that pause Ken Drick's attention sharpened in a way that no longer belonged entirely to the moment in front of him.
"Like your vision," he said.
The words did not echo. They sank.
Meika's fingers slowed. The pendant stopped turning for a moment before moving again, more carefully now.
"I didn't ask for it," she said quietly, as though she had been waiting for the question without knowing it would arrive here. "It just happens. Pieces of things. Places I've never been. People I don't know. And then everything becomes too fast, too loud, and I can't tell what's real until it's already gone."
Ken Drick listened without interruption, but something in him shifted with each detail, not away from her, but inward, as if he were no longer hearing isolated fragments but assembling them into a shape he did not want to recognize too quickly.
"Soldiers," he said softly, testing the idea rather than confirming it.
Meika nodded. "And a building. It was burning, I think. I remember the smell more than the fire. And someone was calling your name, but I couldn't see who."
At that, Ken Drick's gaze drifted away from her toward the far end of the hall, where light bled through tall windows and broke against stone. For a moment, he looked less like a man responding and more like one recalibrating something internal that had already begun to fracture into possibility.
"The capital has always carried its tensions," he said slowly, more to himself than to her, "but what you're describing isn't unrest in isolation."
Meika frowned slightly. "What does that mean?"
He hesitated, and the silence that followed felt less like uncertainty and more like recognition delayed by reluctance.
"If these images were separate moments, I would call it stress or coincidence," he said at last. "But what you're describing is sequence. Movement. Escalation."
His gaze returned to her, quieter now but sharper in focus.
"And you said my name was being called."
"Yes," Meika said.
Ken Drick exhaled slowly, the sound carrying more restraint than release.
"Then this is not just something you are seeing," he said. "It is something you are standing near."
A faint tension gathered in his posture, not urgency yet, but inevitability forming its outline.
"If someone is calling for me in what you saw, and if those soldiers do not belong to any unit we can place," he continued, "then whatever is forming does not begin on the battlefield."
His voice lowered slightly.
"It begins closer to the center."
Meika's grip tightened around the pendant. "Closer to you?"
A pause followed, and when he answered, it was not with certainty or reassurance, but with something more dangerous in its honesty.
"Closer to all of us."
The words settled in the air between them, and neither of them reached to remove them.
Ken Drick leaned back slightly, his eyes narrowing as thought moved behind them faster than speech could follow.
"And sometimes," he said, almost quietly enough to lose itself in the room, "we build such careful stability around ourselves that we forget we are also building pressure."
Meika watched him, the pendant still moving now, but more slowly.
"Is that what's happening now?"
He did not answer immediately. The pause carried weight, not absence. When he finally spoke, it felt less like a conclusion and more like an admission shaped into restraint.
"I think we are standing at a point where holding on and losing everything are beginning to cost the same thing," he said.
Before either of them could follow the thought further, the doors opened again.
A Presidential Guardsman entered quickly, his posture controlled but tight with urgency. He stepped close to Ken Drick and spoke in a low voice that did not carry across the chamber.
Ken Drick listened without reaction at first, though something in the air around him shifted as the message settled. Not alarm, not confusion, but immediate clarity forming its boundaries. When the guardsman stepped back, the President's expression had already changed.
"Mobilize the Presidential Guard," Ken Drick said evenly. "Seal all perimeter routes out of Revilla. Establish checkpoints at every exit and enforce martial law."
A brief pause followed as his attention sharpened further.
"They are attempting to move Karlos out of the capital," he added. "That will not happen."
The guardsman nodded once and withdrew.
Silence returned, but it was no longer the same silence as before. Something had entered it and remained.
Ken Drick's gaze returned to Meika, and for a moment, the authority in him did not fully eclipse the familiarity beneath it.
"Kid," he said softly, the word stripped of formality, carrying something closer to fear than command, "you have to stay here."
Meika rose slowly from her seat.
The movement was not abrupt, but it changed the shape of the room.
"Stay here?" she repeated, quieter than before, as if testing whether the words could hold their meaning under pressure.
"There are secure rooms," he said. "The Guard will be stationed outside every entrance. You will be protected."
Meika's fingers found the pendant again, gripping it more firmly now.
"I can't stay here," she said. The calm in her voice was still present, but it had begun to gather weight beneath it. "If Karlos has been taken and people are already getting hurt because of it, then waiting in a room doesn't change anything."
Ken Drick did not interrupt.
She stepped closer, not in defiance, but in urgency that wanted to be understood before it became irreversible.
"I know I'm not trained like them," she said, "but I can still help the wounded. I can still do something instead of being somewhere safe while everything is falling apart outside."
A silence followed, and in that silence, something unspoken passed between them that neither acknowledged aloud: recognition of each other's fear.
Ken Drick's expression softened, but not into agreement. He hesitated for a moment, as if the words belonged in a conversation he had heard somewhere else before, then set it aside.
"Because it's true."
Meika held his gaze for a moment longer, as if waiting for the certainty in his words to shift into something less final. When it did not, her expression changed, not into frustration, but into a quieter strain of acceptance that still refused to yield.
"You keep saying you understand," she said softly, "but it doesn't feel like you do."
Ken Drick did not respond immediately. His attention stayed on her, steady and unreadable in the way of someone weighing more than what was being said in the room. Whatever argument he might have offered next never quite formed, as if the shape of it no longer mattered.
Meika's fingers tightened around the pendant as she continued, her voice lowering, no longer trying to persuade so much as explain something that had already taken hold of her.
"I saw them," she said. "Not just soldiers, not just fire, but the sense of it, like I was already inside something that hadn't happened yet. And every time it comes, it doesn't feel like I'm watching a future. It feels like I'm remembering something I was never meant to forget."
For a moment, the air between them seemed to thicken, not with tension alone, but with recognition that neither of them fully welcomed.
Ken Drick's expression remained controlled, yet something in his focus shifted inward, as though her words were no longer only about her experience but about a pattern he had spent years trying not to name too directly.
"That is precisely why you stay here," he said at last, quieter than before.
Meika shook her head, not sharply, but with a certainty that came from something deeper than disagreement.
"No," she replied. "That is why I can't."
The answer did not rise in volume, yet it carried further than anything she had said before it. Ken Drick's gaze lingered on her, and for a brief moment, he looked less like someone responding and more like someone remembering the shape of a choice he had once been forced to make in a different form.
"You think proximity will give you control over it," he said.
"I think distance is what makes it unbearable," she answered.
That exchange left a pause that neither rushed to fill. It wasn't silence born of stalemate, but something more fragile, as if both of them had reached a point where further explanation would not change what they already understood.
Ken Drick's attention dipped briefly, and when it returned, it carried a weight that was no longer purely political.
"You are not the first person I've seen mistake closeness for responsibility," he said. "And I have never seen it end without cost."
Meika's grip loosened slightly, though she did not step back.
"I'm not trying to be important," she said more quietly. "I just don't want to look back and know I chose to stay still when I could have moved."
Ken Drick exhaled through his nose, a restrained sound that suggested exhaustion more than disagreement. When he spoke again, his voice had softened, not in authority, but in something closer to personal truth.
"What you are trying to protect yourself from," he said, "is not regret. It is helplessness."
The word settled between them differently than the others had.
Meika looked down at the pendant briefly, then back up.
"And if I stay," she said, "and people die because I could have helped, then I don't think I come out of that the same person."
That finally broke something, not his resolve, but the clean separation between protection and consequence.
Ken Drick held her gaze, and for a moment the President was absent from his expression entirely. What remained was quieter, heavier, and more personal than anything he had allowed the room to see so far.
"And if you go," he said slowly, "and I lose you to what is coming, then there is no version of this future that justifies it."
Meika did not answer immediately. The space between them had stopped feeling like disagreement and started feeling like two outcomes that could not both be survived.
"So this isn't about what I can do," she said at last, softer now. "It's about what you can live with."
Ken Drick did not correct her.
That absence of denial carried its own answer.
He stepped slightly closer, not too close, but to lower the space between words.
"I am not asking you to agree," he said. "I am asking you to remain here because once you step outside that door, I will not be able to bring you back into any outcome that keeps you safe."
Meika's fingers remained around the pendant, but the tension in her hand had shifted, less resistance now, more containment.
"And if I stay," she said, "and I'm wrong…"
Her voice trailed slightly, not uncertain, but aware of the shape of that consequence.
Ken Drick finished it for her, not harshly, but without softening the weight of it.
"Then you will still be here to live through it."
The words lingered, no longer part of an argument but something closer to an ending that neither of them had agreed to, yet both had arrived at through different paths.
And in that shared silence, the fracture between them did not close, but it stopped pretending it was negotiable.
To be Continued