They gave him a bunk, a bedroll, and a ration pack that smelled like salted regret.
Cael sat on the edge of the bunk and ate slowly, watching the others settle in around the staging hall's sleeping quarters. Nobody talked much. The kind of quiet that came after someone mentioned three dead teams.
He used the silence to finish his count.
Twelve recruits. He'd catalogued ten in the hall. The remaining two had arrived late — a girl with a shaved head who moved like she'd spent years running from things, and a heavyset older man who looked more like a failed merchant than a soldier. Both registered Nulls, based on their unmarked collars.
Thirteen total including himself.
Odd number. Orders preferred even splits for partner missions. Which meant either someone wasn't coming back before the ruins, or one person was operating on a different set of instructions entirely.
Cael filed that away.
The Ashwalker — the one with the faint sequence-mark — dropped onto the bunk across from him without asking. Up close he was older than Cael initially read. Maybe nineteen. Sharp jaw, quick eyes, the kind of lean that came from not eating enough rather than training hard.
"You were the last one picked up," the Ashwalker said.
"Observant."
"I'm Dren." He extended a hand.
Cael looked at it. Then shook it, because refusing without reason was information he wasn't ready to give.
"Cael."
"Null?"
"That's what the file says."
Dren's eyes moved over him once — quick, practiced — then he leaned back against the wall. "They pulled me out of a debtor rotation. You?"
"Market."
"Hm." Dren was quiet for a moment. "Seventh rank Ashwalker and they still put me in a Null mission. That's either an insult or they needed someone who could actually hold a blade."
"Probably both," Cael said.
Dren almost smiled. "You always like this?"
"Like what?"
"Cheerful."
Cael didn't answer. He was watching Commander Vess move through the far end of the hall, speaking quietly to the tall recruiter from the market. She handed him something — a folded document, small enough to be a single page. The recruiter glanced at it, then toward the bunks.
His eyes stopped. Just for a fraction of a second.
On Cael.
Then moved on.
Cael took another bite of his ration and kept his face completely neutral.
*There it is.*
---
He waited until the lights dimmed and the hall settled into the uneven breathing of restless sleep.
Then he got up.
He moved slowly, the way he'd learned to move in Duskwall — weight distributed, no heel strikes, pausing when someone shifted in their bunk. He wasn't the only one awake. The running girl's breathing was too controlled. The older merchant-looking man hadn't moved once since lying down, which meant he was either deeply unconscious or completely still on purpose. Neither option was innocent.
Cael moved to the equipment room adjoining the hall.
It was unlocked. That was either careless or intentional.
He found the mission briefing documents stacked on the supply table, sealed with a wax stamp. Standard Ironward insignia. He didn't break the seal. He held the folded edge to the faint window-light and applied gentle pressure until the layers separated enough to read the first visible line.
*Primary objective: confirm status of Sequence anomaly detected in Greyveil Ruins, Sector 4.*
He read it twice. Let it settle.
*Sequence anomaly.*
Not a container. There was no container. That was what they'd told thirteen recruits who weren't supposed to ask the right questions.
The real objective was a Sequence anomaly.
The thing in the back of his mind turned over again. Slower this time. Heavier.
*They felt it,* it said.
Cael carefully released the pressure on the document. The fold resumed its shape. He set it back exactly as he'd found it, adjusted the stack two degrees to match the dust pattern, and walked back to his bunk.
He lay down and stared at the ceiling.
A Sequence anomaly in a ruin where three teams had already died. And they'd pulled a Null from a slum market — *him specifically* — to go find it.
They knew. Or suspected. Or someone had noted something in his file that pointed toward something they couldn't name.
He thought about his mother. The way she'd disappeared three days after his Null verdict. No body. No note.
He thought about the thing living in the back of his mind. Eight years of silence broken only by rare, precise moments.
*They felt it,* it had said.
Which meant it could be felt. Which meant it had a signal. Which meant that somewhere in those ruins, something was broadcasting on the same frequency.
Cael closed his eyes.
He had one night before the mission began. One night to decide whether he was walking into this blind or whether he started building the board now.
He started building the board.
By the time the hall bell rang at dawn, he had the first six moves mapped.
It wasn't enough.
It was a start.