Chris's group reached the outer perimeter of Veyrhold from the southern approach with twenty-three students still following him.
They were tired, but intact. Their boots were muddy, their uniforms scraped, their breaths heavier than they had been at the beginning of the march, and several students had begun moving with the stiff caution of people trying to hide fatigue from themselves. But they had not suffered major losses. They had not scattered. They had not wasted their extraction marks.
They had moved through hostile terrain, recovered another group from Glassmaws, and maintained formation well enough to reach the first true objective of the assessment. Chris knew that much. He had done well. Even the part of him that measured every success against Sheila's shadow understood that his command had not been empty performance.
