The last three weeks felt different.

  Everything tightened. Edges, expectations, tempers. Killgore stopped pretending. His words became a constant growl across the base:

  "The Black Trials are coming. Get ready, or get broken."

  Days blurred.

  Urban assault one morning. Mountain approach the next. Forest ambush after that. Every scenario came with something waiting in the dark—false intel, a civilian projection in the middle of a killhouse, orders over comms that contradicted what they could see with their own eyes.

  Ralaen and Eirik got extra twists.

  In one sim, Ralaen led a squad through a tight urban block. Clean movement, solid comms. They were doing well. Then an artillery strike marker hit half her team without warning. No briefing. No hint.

  Four icons blanked on her HUD at once. Her stomach dropped.

  Hammond's voice came over the net, calm and cold. "Recruit Ralaen, your plan just died with them. Adapt or fail."

  Her first instinct was to argue. She swallowed it and moved.

  She pulled the survivors back two streets, shifted the axis, grabbed an Azelari fireteam from another lane that was running ahead of schedule, and forced an improvised joint push. Messy. Costly. It worked.

  Afterward, Killgore gave her a "three out of nine and a half" on one of his nonsense scales.

  "You should be ashamed you walked into it," he said, "and proud you didn't stay there. Hold both. That's called learning."

  In another drill, Eirik led a unit on a time-critical objective. Halfway through, he found a "wounded" Drakari in the open—tagged non-mobile, under fire. The clock ticked. The instructors watched without a word.

  He stopped.

  He dragged the Drakari into cover, reassigned a fireteam to guard, and watched the timer bleed out. They hit the objective late.

  "Six out of ten minus four plus something," Killgore said. "You lost score. You kept your people. Right call." He paused. "Remember this. You can do the right thing and still get punished. That's war."

  Sigrun started appearing on the sidelines.

  She stood apart during drills, spear grounded, arms folded. Her eyes never rested on one person for long. Sometimes she followed Ralaen and Eirik as they worked together. Sometimes she watched the whole formation move.

  Once, Ralaen saw the Valkyrja's lips moving—but no one was close enough to hear. The hair at the back of her neck stood up.

  She thought about asking. Then she decided she wanted to sleep at some point this week and kept quiet.

  At night, Killgore ran mock trials.

  Compressed scenarios. No time to think. Just enough time to reveal instinct.

  They'd run a tight sim, stumble through it, then stand on the parade ground while Killgore paced with his slate.

  "Squad one. You're a four on the 'not completely embarrassing' scale. Ralaen, plus half a point for noticing the kill box before walking all the way into it. Eirik, minus a point for believing intel instead of your eyes."

  The numbers didn't matter. Everyone still listened to every word.

  After three weeks, the unit hummed with a strange energy. Exhausted in a way that lived in bones and joints. Sharper than they'd ever been.

  They wanted the Black Trials to start just so the waiting would stop.

  Trial day dawned cold and clear.

  They formed up on the campaign field in full kit. No banter. No complaints. This was not a day for them.

  Ralaen stood in the front third of the Federation block, black fur bristling under the chill, sky-blue eyes fixed on the instructors. Her harness straps dug into shoulders that no longer protested the weight.

  Killgore and the usual wall of instructors waited. Next to them stood two figures who didn't belong to the daily routine.

  Ralaen knew one.

  Sigrun wore her simple uniform, but today the spear was in her hand. The air around her felt very still.

  The other woman was taller, broad-shouldered, black hair cropped short. Her armor was heavier than Jaeger gear—layered, reinforced, covered in quiet wear marks. A stylized crown and spear sigil sat on her shoulder plate.

  The field settled into silence without command.

  "Recruits," Killgore said.

  The word landed differently now.

  "Today you stand for the Black Trials. Pass, and you are Jaegers. Fail, and you are not. Simple. Ugly."

  He gestured to the two women beside him.

  "You know Valkyrja Sigrun. The other is Anastasia Dragomir of the Einherjar. She's here to watch you work and decide if any of you are stupid and stubborn enough to be offered something worse than Jaeger duty."

  A ripple moved through the ranks. Short breaths. Tight shoulders.

  Killgore let it pass.

  "For most of you, this is about the Black only. Focus on that. No fantasies. No showing off. You don't impress the Einherjar by trying to look heroic. You impress them by doing your job under pressure without excuses."

  He gave them a heartbeat.

  "Here's what you face."

  The Black Trials were not one test. They were a chain.

  It started with a blindfold and a shuttle ride.

  They were hauled aboard in silence, blindfolds on, restraints clipped. Ralaen focused on vibration, engine pitch—anything that might give a hint. The shuttle dropped, bounced once, settled.

  Blindfolds came off into cold darkness.

  Trees. Rock. No landmarks. No base, no towers, no friendly lines. Just night, breath fogging the air, the weight of gear, and a map missing half its markers.

  Find your way to Objective One. Without losing anyone. Without getting seen. Without stepping on anything that beeps.

  Ralaen's squad moved.

  Her ears picked up the faint whine of buried sensors before anyone else. Azelari eyes spotted the slight soil change where a plate was hidden. Hissthar's motion sense caught a roaming patrol moments before they came into view.

  Distant shouts and sharp cracks rolled through the dark as other squads took hits. Swearing on the net, quickly cut off.

  Ralaen kept their pace steady. Fast enough to beat the clock. Not fast enough to get sloppy. Eirik mirrored her calls on the other flank without needing orders.

  They reached Objective One with seconds to spare and every icon still lit.

  "Phase One complete. Score recorded."

  No one smiled. There was no space for it.

  Objective One turned out to be an access point into a mock city.

  Inside, everything compressed.

  Narrow alleys. Stacked habs. Projected civilians on semi-random patterns. Hostiles mixed in. Booby traps. Windows. Overhead angles.

  The task list was short and ugly: Clear a route. Rescue a captured friendly. Secure a data core. Avoid civilian casualties. Do not get wiped out by the surprise armor push mentioned nowhere in the brief.

  Ralaen took point with Hissthar and Maelis.

  They flowed room to room, hall to hall. Hissthar's coils gave reach and leverage. Maelis called fields of fire. Ralaen tracked movement and noise, claws tight on the grip.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Twice, a civilian hologram flickered in front of a hostile at bad angles. Twice, her finger tightened and stopped. She paid for that heartbeat with a stinging sim-round to the shoulder both times.

  Points lost. Lesson burned in. Move on.

  On the other side of the block, Eirik got handed a simulated armor threat with no anti-armor tools.

  He grabbed whoever was close—two Drakari with extra charges and Ralaen's team as they cleared their sector—and turned the street into a trap. Charges under wrecks. Firing positions marked. A false retreat to pull the sim-armor into the kill lane.

  The AI registered a kill.

  "Phase Two complete."

  No break.

  They were separated without warning.

  One moment Ralaen was in a stairwell, squad in front and behind. The next, a smoke charge went off, the floor shuddered, and she came out coughing into a different corridor—only her own icon on the HUD, comms restricted to local.

  "Recruit Ralaen. Your squad is scattered. You have an injured teammate two blocks east and an extraction point four blocks west. Both are on the clock. Your choice."

  Her lungs burned. Her legs felt heavy. Her thoughts came slow and sharp at the same time.

  She went east.

  The injured turned out to be a human recruit with a leg rigged useless and a timer over his head that made her teeth clench.

  "We can't make both," he said through sim-pain. "Leave me. Go."

  "Stop talking." She hauled him up. "You don't get to fail my test for me."

  She half-carried, half-dragged him toward the extraction point. Every step hurt. Her shoulders screamed. The marker on the HUD seemed to crawl.

  The timer died five meters out.

  "Objective failed. Note: recruit chose squadmate over mission time. Logged."

  The urge to scream sat behind her teeth.

  No time.

  They dumped her into a land-nav leg. No proper map. Only coordinates and a compass. Sleep loss pressed against the back of her eyes. At one point she was sure she saw movement in a treeline that turned out to be nothing.

  On a ridge in the distance, she saw Sigrun's silhouette. Still. Watching. Lips moving in silent words.

  Ralaen put her head down and walked.

  Later, she learned Eirik had faced his own version—a choice between pushing a counterattack on a flagged objective or falling back to guard a corridor full of projected civilians. He chose the corridor and watched the objective ticker hit zero.

  Different details. Same knife.

  They pulled them back together.

  Exhausted. Hungry. Edges frayed.

  Final scenario: hold a position.

  Limited ammo. No promised resupply. Waves of attackers. Civilians scattered through the field. Wounded piling up in the rear. Intel feeds contradicting what they saw with their own eyes.

  The last wave wasn't a wave. It was a hammer.

  For a moment, it seemed they might hold. Then a new marker flashed red on their HUDs: Protect VIP. A downed recruit twenty meters away, exposed and bleeding out.

  At the same moment, the order came through: VIP is non-essential. Abandon position and retreat to fallback Echo. That is an order.

  Ralaen's jaw locked. She looked at Eirik through smoke and chaos. He looked back.

  Hissthar's voice cut through. "Orders?"

  Ralaen heard Sigrun in her memory. The tavern. Eirik talking about worth. Killgore talking about responsibility.

  They spoke at the same time.

  "Negative on withdrawal," Eirik said. "We hold."

  "Agreed," Ralaen said. "We hold."

  They held.

  They moved to protect the VIP, and in doing so, sealed their fate. The sim didn't give them a win. It gave them the consequences of their choice.

  "Phase Four complete. Strategic failure. Tactical and moral performance: logged for review."

  Ralaen dropped to one knee. Her hands shook. Her chest heaved.

  She expected Killgore's voice to tear into them.

  Instead—only the sound of boots, medics, and the low murmur of Sigrun and Anastasia moving along the line, eyes on faces.

  They stood in rough ranks.

  Gear hung off them at bad angles. Faces streaked with sweat and training paint. Eyes bloodshot and raw.

  Killgore studied them.

  "You failed a lot today," he said. "On paper."

  No one argued.

  "You missed timings. Lost objectives. Disobeyed orders. Went after wounded when the clock told you not to. Held ground intel said to abandon."

  He paused.

  "Good. You did all of that for the right reasons."

  He lifted his slate.

  "The Black Trials aren't about dancing to a perfect plan. They're about seeing what breaks first—your courage, your loyalty, or your brains. None of those snapped today. You bent. You held."

  He drew a breath.

  "You are no longer maggots. You are Jaegers. You've earned the black. You can wear it without giving me a headache."

  The cheer that went up was hoarse and cracked, but real. Ralaen felt it hit somewhere deep. The word Jaeger sat in her chest with strange, heavy rightness.

  Killgore waited until the noise faded.

  "For you Federation types, there's one more decision. You can go home, take what you've learned, serve under your own flags. Or you can stay. Swear in and serve under ours."

  A tense murmur rolled through the ranks.

  "I'm not telling you what to do," Killgore said. "Your people sent you here to learn. You did. But I'll tell you this: it would be a waste to see all this work show up later pointing rifles the wrong direction."

  He let that sit.

  "You have time. Don't answer while you're half-conscious. You've done enough of that today."

  He straightened.

  "Dismissed. Except Andreassen and Ralaen. You two stay."

  Heads turned. Quiet curses. A muttered "here we go" from somewhere in the middle.

  The formation broke. People limped toward water, medics, flat surfaces. Ralaen stayed where she was, Eirik beside her.

  Her hands had stopped shaking—only because they were past that stage. Eirik's face was steady. His pupils a little too wide.

  Sigrun and Anastasia approached.

  Up close, Anastasia felt heavier even without a word. There was a stillness to her that had nothing to do with armor. When she spoke, her voice wasn't loud, but it cut through exhaustion like a chisel through stone.

  "Recruit Andreassen." She corrected herself without pause. "Jaeger Andreassen. Jaeger Ralaen."

  She inclined her head. Approval. No comfort.

  "You both did well. You made mistakes in useful places. That matters more than clean scores."

  Sigrun watched Ralaen, gaze steady, not unkind.

  "We have conferred," Anastasia went on. "Killgore. Sigrun. Myself. Others not standing on this field. We don't make this invitation often. We don't make it easily."

  She turned to Eirik first.

  "You are invited to attempt the Crown Trials. If you accept, you begin pre-Crown conditioning at oh-five-hundred tomorrow. Your limits will be tested in ways you haven't seen yet. If you pass, you will not be the man who first walked into J?tunheim."

  She paused, gaze unwavering.

  "The first thing the Crown Trials break is your past. They find the person you were and grind it to dust. If you're still standing after that, they might find something useful to build with. Don't accept if you're attached to who you are now."

  Eirik's jaw flexed. He held her gaze and said nothing.

  Then Anastasia looked at Ralaen.

  "You as well."

  Ralaen's thoughts stopped.

  She heard the words. Her mind tried to reject them. Somewhere behind it all, her pulse spiked like she was back in the killhouse.

  Sigrun stepped forward slightly.

  "For you," she said softly, "this is not only about strength."

  "Because I'm Asuari," Ralaen said. Her voice sounded rough to her own ears.

  "Because you already stand inside other bindings. Family. Confederacy. Home." Sigrun's voice was quiet but clear. "The Crown Trials, if you accept and pass, place you under another call. You will still be Asuari. But in the ways that matter to us, your first duty in war will be to the Allfather's summons. Allied governments can request. They cannot command."

  Anastasia nodded.

  "It also means that if you fall in the right way, your path after death follows Valhalla—not whatever halls your people speak of. You will be counted as Einherjar before any other title. You will bear the Allfather's mark."

  Sigrun added quietly, "Your home will no longer be the place you were born, but the hall where you are destined to die."

  Ralaen's head felt too full.

  Her parents' messages. Their faces on a screen. The Confederacy emblem on her old uniform. Her home world. J?tunheim's wind on black fur. Killgore shouting. Eirik's hand steadying her in the tavern. Sigrun's calm voice in the chapel. The way Jaeger had just settled into her bones.

  "What happens if I say no?"

  "Then you are a Jaeger who fought well in the Black Trials," Sigrun said. "You go on serving as you choose. No mark. No hidden judgment. This is not a trick."

  Ralaen looked at Eirik.

  He had that shielded calm again. The decision look.

  He bowed his head to Anastasia. "I accept. By the Allfather, I'll stand for it."

  Ralaen's chest tightened. Of course he did.

  He turned toward her. Didn't push. Didn't say a word. Just waited.

  Her mouth moved before the rest of her caught up.

  "I accept. I'll attempt the Crown Trials."

  Silence.

  Sigrun's eyes sharpened. For a heartbeat, something old and distant passed through them—something that made Ralaen want to look away and keep watching at the same time.

  "So noted," Anastasia said. "You report to pre-Crown conditioning at oh-five-hundred tomorrow. Sleep while you can. You'll remember today as restful."

  She turned and walked off the field.

  Sigrun stayed.

  "You still have tonight," the Valkyrja said quietly. "If you wake and realize you spoke from fear instead of conviction, you can withdraw before dawn. No shame. No stain. After that, the door shuts."

  Ralaen nodded. Words felt risky.

  Sigrun acknowledged them both with a small tilt of her head and left.

  Killgore looked at them for a long moment, something complicated in his expression.

  "Off you go. You've collected enough life changes for one afternoon."

  The Federation barracks sounded like a debate before they even opened the door.

  "—I'm not saying we abandon our fleets, I'm saying we can do more good here—"

  "—you want to sign yourself over without knowing the full contract—"

  "—they already treat us as Jaegers, why pretend we can put that down—"

  Ralaen recognized Sari's quick cadence, Hissthar's sibilant hiss, Vorrek's slow weight, Maelis' precise bite.

  Eirik pushed the door open.

  The argument stopped.

  Dozens of eyes turned. Asuari fur. Ssarathi scales. Drakari horns. Felari ears. Azelari silver. Human faces.

  Eirik still had that settled look. Ralaen probably looked like she'd stepped off a moving transport and hadn't decided if the landing was survivable.

  Sari's ears went up. "You two look terrible. I assume something important happened."

  "Killgore decided we didn't suffer enough today," Eirik said. "So he arranged something worse for tomorrow."

  Weak snorts.

  They told them.

  Black Trials passed. Jaegers now. Einherjar observer. Invitation. Crown Trials. Tomorrow.

  Sari stared, then burst out laughing.

  "Of course. Of course it's you two." She shook her head. "I owe half this room money."

  Maelis swore in Azelari.

  Vorrek gave a low sound that might have been approval. "That answers one question."

  Ralaen blinked. "What question?"

  "Stay ásveldi or go home," Hissthar said. "Sari and I argued for staying. Maelis argued for returning. Vorrek was undecided. We agreed to wait."

  Sari's tail flicked toward the space between Ralaen and Eirik. "We said we'd see what you two chose. You didn't just walk in with Crown Trials in your eyes. You walked in like you'd already stepped through the first gate together. That's clear enough."

  Hissthar bared teeth in something like a smile. "If the one we keep following into fire is signing on for the Crown, then ásveldi service is the easier decision."

  Maelis shot them all a look that could have cut metal.

  "This is not a rational decision-making process," she said. "But I'm outnumbered. I'll tell my superiors exactly what I think of it. After I sign."

  Vorrek nodded. "I'll stay. My queen asked for knowledge. I'll bring it from the center, not the edge."

  Ralaen let out an unsteady breath that became a short laugh.

  "This isn't how informed consent works."

  "This is exactly how squads work," Sari said. "You jumped first. We followed. We'll complain on the way."

  Eirik dropped onto his bunk and stared at the ceiling.

  "Welcome to Jaeger life. Bad options, bad timing, good people."

  Ralaen sat down carefully. Her legs were starting to realize the day was over.

  Her head still spun. Her chest still felt tight. Tomorrow stood in front of her like a wall she couldn't see through.

  But in this room, something had settled.

  They were Jaegers now.

  Some had chosen ásveldi service over familiar flags. Two had stepped toward a path with no clear end.

  Ralaen didn't know where it led. Valhalla. Another battlefield. Some future she couldn't picture.

  She only knew that when she looked around the room, she didn't feel alone.

  For tonight, that was enough.