Start of the third week. The camp had settled into the grim rhythm of a machine designed to turn people into soldiers. Or grind them up trying. The grid of streets and tents never changed. Same right angles. Same standards at every intersection. Same ditch-and-palisade perimeter that the engineers maintained with devotion.

  Wake. Run. Survive. Eat. Train. Hurt. Sleep. Repeat.

  Twenty-four recruits left from the original thirty-something. Three more had disappeared overnight. Cots empty, gear gone, no explanation. Corvin said two had been sent to labor details. The third he wasn't sure about. "Could be the infirmary. Could be a ditch. Don't ask questions you don't want answered."

  I didn't ask.

  My body had crossed some invisible threshold in the past few days. The point where pain stopped being a crisis and became a climate. My feet had scabbed over properly. The blisters on my hands were becoming calluses, thick and yellow-white, and I could grip a sword without bleeding. The ribs still ached when I twisted wrong, but I'd learned to move around them. Adaptation. The body's stubborn insistence on continuing to function.

  I'd been doing it my whole life. Just never with a sword in my hand.

  Morning assembly. Kolt walked the line. Her rod tapped its steady rhythm. When she reached me, she paused. Shorter than last time. The assessments were getting briefer as I proved I was going to keep showing up.

  "You're getting less pathetic, old man," she said.

  "Thank you, Sergeant."

  "That's not a compliment. It's a measurement." She moved on. But I thought I saw the corner of her mouth twitch. Hard to tell with the scars.

  She reached the front and turned to face us. "Two things. First, we're getting a transfer. Mid Jade. He'll be joining your cohort."

  The reaction was immediate. Mutters. Exchanged looks. A Mid Jade in a Low Quartz unit didn't make sense. You didn't put someone with that rating in with cannon fodder unless someone wanted them to suffer.

  "Second," Kolt continued over the noise, "Lieutenant Aldric will be overseeing training exercises for the cohort going forward. You will address him as 'sir.' You will not waste his time."

  She stepped aside.

  The officer who'd been watching from the edge of the weapons yard for the past week stepped forward.

  Up close, he was less a shadow and more a man. But only barely. Maybe six feet tall. Lean, wiry, built for endurance rather than power. His face was weathered in the way that meant too many campaigns and not enough years between them. Lines around his eyes. Lines around his mouth. Short dark hair going gray at the temples. Cold gray eyes that moved across us the way a mechanic's hands move across an engine, feeling for the parts that don't work.

  He moved with no waste. Every step deliberate. Every motion stripped to its essential components.

  Aldric wasn't bored. He was a man paying very close attention and making it look like he wasn't.

  He walked the ranks. Slow. Unhurried. His boots barely made a sound on the packed dirt. He looked at each recruit. Really looked, the way a buyer looks at horses, reading the conformation, the temperament, the soundness.

  When he reached me, he stopped.

  Two seconds. Maybe three. His eyes tracked from my wrapped feet to my scabbed hands to my face. The same inspection he gave everyone else. Nothing lingering. Nothing that said we'd stood behind the armory two nights ago while he hit me with a practice sword and I told him I was impossible.

  He moved on.

  To anyone watching, I was just another recruit he'd assessed and dismissed. That was the point.

  He finished the walk. Returned to Kolt's side. Still said nothing.

  "Training stations," Kolt barked. "Move."

  We moved.

  The transfer arrived during the midday break.

  His name was Kel Ardyn, and he walked into our section of the camp the way a man walks into a room he's already decided is beneath him.

  Tall. Early twenties. That unconscious physical grace some people carried. Though I suspected Kel knew exactly what he was carrying and what it was worth. His clothes were the same rough recruit issue as everyone else's, but they fit better, or he stood straighter inside them. Mid Jade brand on his forearm, the symbol clear and precise.

  Everything about him said I don't belong here. The clean lines of his posture. The hands that hadn't done labor. The way his eyes swept the barracks with an expression caught between disgust and disbelief.

  I recognized the type. The boss's kid who shows up expecting sparkling water and gets handed a shovel.

  Corvin was at my side before Kel had taken three steps. "Noble's bastard," he murmured. "Has to be. Legitimate sons don't need to prove anything."

  "How do you know he's proving something?"

  "He volunteered. I heard the clerk talking. Volunteered. For military service." Corvin's tone suggested this was roughly equivalent to volunteering for a head injury. "And he was supposed to be in a command program in the capital. Someone rerouted him here instead."

  "Politics?"

  "Worse. Family." Corvin's sharp eyes tracked Kel across the yard. "Someone in his bloodline wants him ground down. Or dead. Either works when you put a Mid Jade in a Low Quartz cohort on the front lines."

  Kel reached the barracks entrance. Stopped. Looked at the canvas tent, the straw cots, the mud. His jaw tightened.

  Then he went inside.

  "This is going to be interesting," Corvin said.

  "That's one word for it."

  Senna found Kel before anyone else did. Of course she did.

  I saw it from across the yard during afternoon break. Senna walking toward him with that direct, unhurried stride. Corvin and I followed. Senna walking toward a problem alone was the kind of thing that required witnesses.

  "You're Kel?" she said.

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  He looked at her. Looked at us. His expression was a door being closed and locked and bolted.

  "What do you want?"

  "To introduce ourselves. I'm Senna. This is Marcus. Corvin."

  "I didn't ask for introductions."

  "No," Corvin said. "But you're going to get them anyway. Because we'll be standing next to you when someone tries to kill us, and it helps to know each other's names."

  Kel's eyes swept over Corvin. Assessed. Dismissed. Landed on me. Lingered there. I saw him clock my age, my weathered face, my wrapped feet.

  "You're old for a recruit," he said.

  "I get that a lot."

  "And you're Low Quartz."

  "Also get that a lot."

  There was a curiosity in his eyes.

  "Mid Jade in a Low Quartz cohort," he said, more to himself than to us. "This was deliberate."

  "Obviously," Corvin said.

  "I wasn't supposed to be here."

  "Nobody was supposed to be here," Senna said. "But we are. So we might as well not be enemies."

  Kel looked at her. Something in his posture shifted, the faintest crack in the facade. An acknowledgment that she'd said something he hadn't expected.

  "I'm not here to make friends," he said. But the hostility was thinner now.

  "Good," Corvin said. "Friends are overrated. Allies are useful." He grinned. "We can be allies. Very low commitment. Barely any emotional investment."

  Kel almost smiled. Almost. The corners of his mouth moved a fraction before discipline killed it.

  "I'll consider it," he said, and walked away.

  Corvin watched him go. "Two weeks. Maybe three. He'll come around."

  "He's scared," Senna said.

  "Obviously."

  "Don't say 'obviously.' It's not obvious to him." She looked at me. "Marcus? What do you think?"

  I thought about a man who'd been sent somewhere to be broken. Who'd walked into a barracks full of strangers and found exactly the contempt he'd expected.

  "I think he's dangerous," I said. "Smart, educated, observant. The kind of person who notices things that don't add up."

  Like a Low Quartz recruit who couldn't channel a flicker of power but was learning swordwork at a rate that defied his brand.

  "But Senna's right," I added. "He's scared. And scared people either push you away or pull you close. No middle ground."

  "Spoken from experience?" Corvin asked.

  I thought about Rachel. About the months before she left, when I'd been so deep inside my own emptiness that I couldn't even see her reaching for me.

  "Yeah," I said. "Experience."

  The afternoon channeling class was the worst yet.

  Every other recruit in the cohort could produce at least a flicker now. Most could sustain it for several seconds. A few of the stronger Low Quartzes were managing brief pulses of enhancement, channeling energy into their hands, their forearms. Visible progress. Measurable growth.

  My turn came. Hand on chest. Eyes closed. Reach.

  The void. The nothing. The hole where the engine should be.

  "Show me."

  Empty palm. Empty hand.

  The instructor stared at me. This was the third class. Every other Low Quartz in the cohort had found their spark. Most had surpassed it.

  "You've shown no progress," he said. Louder than necessary. Meant for the group, not for me. "Three sessions. Not a single flicker."

  I stood there. Said nothing. What was there to say?

  "Low Quartz doesn't mean no Quartz." His tone had sharpened. Frustration. "Even the weakest Core responds to effort. Are you trying?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then try harder."

  I closed my eyes. Reached so deep into the void that I felt dizzy. Pushed against the absence with everything I had. Every ounce of will, every scrap of desire, every desperate need to be normal, to have a Core, to be anything other than what I was.

  Nothing.

  The instructor wrote something in his ledger. The scratch of his stylus was loud in the silence. "See me after class."

  I nodded. Stepped back. Felt thirty pairs of eyes on me, some pitying, some contemptuous, a few grateful they weren't the worst.

  Kel was watching too. From the edge of the group, where he'd been placed for observation. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were sharp. Taking notes behind them.

  Another note in someone's mental file. Another thing that didn't add up.

  After class, the instructor pulled me aside. His voice was lower now. Professional.

  "Marcus." He looked at the ledger. Back at me. "Your brand says Low Quartz. Your progression says otherwise. I've never seen a branded Quartz fail this completely."

  "I'm trying, sir. I don't know why it's not working."

  He studied me. The same searching look the Assessor had worn, but without the terror. Just confusion. And something else. The beginning of a question he wasn't sure he wanted to ask.

  "I'm noting it in my report," he said. "A healer may want to examine your Core. Make sure there isn't damage."

  My stomach dropped. "Is that… common?"

  "Rare. But not unheard of. Battle damage sometimes disrupts Core function." He closed the ledger. "Don't worry about it. Just keep trying."

  I walked away on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else.

  A healer. Examining my Core. Searching for the thing that wasn't there.

  If the Assessor's terror was any indication, a healer would find exactly what he'd found, the nothing, and this time there'd be no panicked branding, no whispered lie. This time there'd be questions. Reports. People with the authority and the inclination to dig deeper.

  The Inquisition hunted Hollows. Senna had told me that. Three hundred years of systematic elimination. Every last one.

  And now my name was in a ledger next to a gap that shouldn't exist, and someone was going to ask why.

  Weapons training was the only hour I didn't feel like I was drowning.

  Havel paired me with a Low Jade. Faster. Stronger. Core-enhanced strikes that hit harder than they should.

  I lost the bout. Badly. The Low Jade was simply more powerful. Each strike backed by channeled energy that made the practice sword feel like it weighed twice as much.

  But I blocked seven of his twelve strikes. Read two combinations before they developed. Countered once. A clean, precise strike to his forearm that made him pause and reassess.

  Seven blocks. One counter. Against a Low Jade.

  For a Low Quartz in his third week of training, that was impossible.

  I knew it. Havel knew it. I saw him watching, saw the slight furrow between his brows.

  And Aldric knew it.

  He was there. Standing at the edge of the yard. Arms crossed. Gray eyes tracking every exchange. When my counter-strike landed, his head tilted a fraction of a degree. The kind of micro-movement that meant a piece had fallen into place.

  Channeling class: nothing. Zero. Complete failure.

  Weapons training: accelerating. Pattern recognition that surpassed my brand by a margin that was getting harder to explain.

  Those two facts didn't fit together. Not for a Low Quartz.

  The session ended. I returned my practice sword. My hands were steadier than they should have been. The calluses were thickening.

  I turned to leave, and Aldric was there. Five feet away. I hadn't heard him move.

  "You're improving," he said. Loud enough for Havel to hear. The voice of a lieutenant noting progress. "Where did you train before this?"

  The question was for anyone listening. The answer needed to be too.

  "I worked in a warehouse, sir. Sorting packages."

  His expression didn't change. "A warehouse."

  "Yes, sir. In another place. A long time ago."

  He nodded. Slow. To anyone watching, a lieutenant losing interest in a Low Quartz recruit's unremarkable history.

  "Keep at it," he said, and walked away.

  But his eyes, in the half-second before he turned, said something else entirely. Tonight. Behind the armory.

  I watched him go and felt the strange weight of having an ally who couldn't acknowledge me. The public performance was flawless. A lieutenant asking routine questions. Me giving forgettable answers. Two people who meant nothing to each other, standing five feet apart in a training yard full of witnesses.

  The lie was getting more complicated. Now someone else was holding it up with me.

  I walked back to the barracks. The evening was settling in. Gray sky dimming to charcoal, cook fires casting orange pools across the mud. Senna fell into step beside me. Corvin appeared on my other side. The pattern of it, their gravitational pull, the way we moved as a unit now without planning to, felt like the closest thing to belonging I'd had since before the divorce.

  "You looked good out there," Senna said. "The counter against the Jade. That was clean."

  "Lucky."

  "It wasn't luck," Corvin said. "You read him. Saw it coming before he committed." He grinned. "You've got good eyes, old man. Just shit legs."

  "Working on the legs."

  "Work faster. My investment needs to start paying dividends."

  Senna shook her head. "You don't invest in people, Corvin."

  "I invest in everything. It's a sickness."

  We reached the barracks. Kel was there, sitting on his cot, alone, reading something he must have brought with him. He glanced up when we entered. His gaze found me, held for a moment, then returned to his reading.

  I sat on my cot. Pulled off my boots. Still painful, but bearable now. Unwrapped my feet. Rewrapped them. The mechanical routine of maintenance.

  I thought about the instructor's ledger. About the healer who might come to examine a Core that didn't exist. Aldric could deflect questions from Havel. He couldn't intercept a medical examination.

  I was getting better at surviving. Better at fighting. Better at pretending.

  But the pretending had a shelf life. The gap between what I could do and what I should be able to do was widening in both directions, too good with a sword, too bad with a Core, and the wider it got, the harder it became to stand in the middle of it and look normal. Aldric's training might teach me to control what I was. It couldn't make me look like something I wasn't.

  The lie was still holding. But for the first time, I wasn't holding it alone.

  But I could hear the grinding.