The ninth day dawns under a sky the color of cold slate, a heavy and oppressive ceiling that seems to press the very breath out of the pentagonal fortification. The usual cacophony of barked insults and the rhythmic thud of spears are replaced by an unsettling, hollow silence. The air is damp, smelling of wet stone and the lingering, sour stench of the previous night's misery.
Officer Aguilar stands before the gathered Earthling teens, but he is transformed. His posture, usually as rigid as the steel he wears, is strangely slumped. His gaze is not fixed on their trembling ranks but on a distant, invisible point beyond the spiked timber walls. He looks older, the golden sheen of his armor dimmed by a thin layer of morning mist.
"Formations," he says, his voice lacking its usual thunderous vibration. It is a flat, dead sound. "Today, ye shall learn the geometry of the slaughter. Though why I bother to sharpen tools that shall surely break is a question for the gods."
He dismisses them with a wave of a leather-gloved hand and, with a flick of his wrist, throws a thick, leather-bound manual into the dirt. It lands with a heavy, wet thud at the feet of the front row, splattering mud onto their shins.
"My heart is a ruin, and yet I am expected to build an army from sand," Aguilar mutters, more to himself than to them, but his voice carries in the stagnant air. "The Lady Zelda... she whom I promised a throne of trophies... she hath abandoned my house. For a Duke! A man whose only merit is a taller spire and a deeper vault of coin. Women are but crows, flying ever to the glittering pile, heedless of the hand that fed them."
He paces a short, erratic line, his boots dragging in the mud. "They are fickle creatures, born with treachery in their marrow. A man pours his soul into the forge of war, and for what? To be discarded like a rusted greave for a man who has never tasted the salt of a march?"
In the silence that follows, a girl near the middle of the pack—a sociology student from Berlin named Malwin—let out a sharp, instinctive breath. "That is literally just blatant misogyny !" she murmurs, her voice small but clear in the vacuum of the yard. "Like, wow. Projecting much?"
Aguilar freezes. He turns slowly, his neck pivoting with a mechanical creak. He stalks toward her, his shadow stretching out like a dark stain. He stops inches from her face, his eyes bloodshot and brimming with a volatile mix of sorrow and rage.
"Speak, daughter of Earth," he whispers, a terrifying, quiet sound. "Explain this... 'mis-og-yny.' What is this word that flutters from thy lips like a moth?"
Malwin's face goes ashen. She trembles, her knees knocking together beneath her tattered tunic. "I-it means... it means you're judging all women based on one bad experience. It's... it's about systemic prejudice. You can't just call half the population 'crows' because your girlfriend dumped you."
Aguilar stares at her for a long, agonizing minute. Then, a thin, cruel smile touches his lips. "Systemic. A grand word for a small soul. Thou hast a tongue for the court and a mind for the parlor, not the pike-line." He turns his head and barks a command to a nearby guard. "Remove this one! She is too soft for the dirt and too sharp of tongue for the mud. Send her to the High-Chamber. She shall be a Hand—a domestic maid for the Baroness's kinswomen. Let her learn the 'system' of polishing silver and holding silence while her betters speak."
The guards seize Malwin. She doesn't scream; she just looks back at the group with wide, terrified eyes as she is led toward the inner keep. Aguilar watches her go, then sighs, a sound of profound, weary bitterness.
"Captain Shaw has been deployed to the palantine Schroderland this morning," Aguilar says, his voice trailing off as he begins to walk toward his private quarters. "Soon, we leave this rot. We march across the reaches of Mikhland. The palantine Heilop prepares a mission... a great reward is to be collected. But I... I have no stomach for the sun today."
He vanishes through the heavy oak doors of the officer's wing, leaving the hundred teens standing in the mud. The training ground feels eerily empty. The only sound is the wind whistling through the termite-infested spear shafts piled against the wall.
Minh steps forward. His face is a mask of soot and cold determination. He reaches down and retrieves the manual from the mud, brushing the grit from the embossed leather cover. He looks at the circle of confused, weary faces.
"We need to practice," Minh says. His voice isn't loud, but it has a frightening, monotonous weight to it. "The officer is gone, but the manual is here. We should run the formations."
"Are you serious, Minh?" Joon-soo groans, leaning heavily on his wooden spear. "The guy literally just gave us a free pass. My feet are bleeding, my arms feel like lead. Let's just sit in the straw for five minutes before someone else comes out here to whip us."
A low murmur of agreement ripples through the crowd. "Yeah, let's just chill..." someone grunts.
Minh doesn't look at them. He flips through the damp pages of the manual, his eyes scanning the faded diagrams of the Palantine tactical structures. "We're going to be sent into a meat grinder," Minh says, his voice flat. "He said it himself—we're moving to Schroderland or whateverland. Mission. Reward. That means combat. If we go out there as a mob, we die in a ditch in the first ten minutes. If we go out there as a unit, maybe some of us don't."
He looks up, his gaze piercing. "Joon-soo, get the front line ready. We're doing the Shield Wall first."
"It's useless, man," Joon-soo retorts, though he slowly straightens his back. "A shield wall against what? Dragons? Magic? We're holding sticks with termites in them. A stiff breeze would knock us over."
"Then we make the sticks work together," Minh counters. "If ten sticks hit at once, they don't break as easily. Now move. Shields up. Spears at the shoulder."
For the next four hours, the yard becomes a place of grinding, repetitive labor. Minh directs them with a cold logic that brooks no argument. He doesn't scream like Aguilar, but his corrections are constant and precise.
"Close the gap, Brian. If I can see through the line, an arrow can get through. Pivot your lead foot. No, don't shuffle, step."
They struggle first with the Shield Wall, creating a jagged, uneven front. Minh walks the line, physically pushing their shoulders into place until the wood overlaps. Then comes the Schiltron—the "hedgehog." They huddle in a tight circle, pikes pointing outward. It is cramped and suffocating; spears tangle, and someone accidentally pokes Joon-soo in the calf.
"Watch it!" Joon-soo snaps. "Minh, this circle thing is a disaster. We're literally just stabbing each other."
"Reset !" Minh says. "The pikes in the second rank need to be angled higher. Again."
Next, they drill the Boar's Head, a dense, wedge-shaped hammer. Minh places the strongest boys at the point, urging them to lean their weight forward. They practice the charge, stumbling over the uneven dirt, but slowly, the wedge begins to hold its shape.
The most complex is the Tercio. Minh organizes them into a square—pikes on the outside, musketeers in the center. It is a forest of steel and wood.
"Step one of twelve.." Minh calls out, referring to the matchlock loading. "The pikes hold the line while the middle rank primes. Sync the movement. On my count... shift!"
The final drill is the Countermarch. Rows of musketeers firing, then cycling to the back to reload while the next row steps forward. It is a dance of constant, rolling fire. They trip over each other's feet. They fumbled the "imaginary" powder.
"The row isn't in sync..." Minh observes, standing at the flank. "The third man in the second row is too slow. You're breaking the rhythm. If you break the rhythm, the fire stops, and the cavalry reaches us. Again."
He doesn't scold. He doesn't curse. He simply repeats the instruction until the movement becomes mechanical. The teenagers, terrified of the silence and the memory of the lash, follow his lead. They are exhausted, their muscles screaming, but they find a strange, hollow comfort in the organization.
After hours of the same twelve steps and the same four pivots, the rows finally begin to move as one. The clack of the wooden spears hitting the ground is synchronized. The shuffle of feet is a single, heavy thud.
Joon-soo wipes a thick layer of sweat and dust from his eyes. He looks at the sun, which is beginning to sink behind the slate-colored clouds. He pants. "That's enough. They're dead on their feet. If we keep going, they'll start collapsing, and then we'll actually get in trouble when a guard sees us."
Minh pauses, looking at the ragged, soot-stained group. Their eyes are vacant, their breathing heavy. He closes the manual.
"Fine," Minh says, his voice finally losing a bit of its edge. "Rest. We've done enough for today."
The Earthling teens collapse where they stand, sinking into the mud and straw of the yard. They don't talk. They don't gossip. They simply breathe, the heavy silence of the fort returning as the cold night wind begins to pick up. Above them, the guards on the Mage-Walks look down, their armored faces unreadable. For the first time, the "Carcasses" didn't just look like a pile of bodies; they looked like a machine, waiting for the key to turn.
...
The tenth day drags its heels through the dirt, a deceptive, hollow stretch of time marked only by the repetitive thud-thud-thud of spears and the gnawing ache of stomachs half-filled with gray, watery gruel. As the sun dips below the jagged horizon, painting the pentagonal fort in shades of bruised purple and dried blood, a heavy silence falls. But it isn't the silence of peace; it's the silence of a held breath.
Deep in the bowels of the barracks—a long, damp stone hall smelling of mildew and unwashed bodies—the Earthling teens are far from sleep. They huddle in the thick, prickly straw, their eyes wide and darting in the gloom.
"I'm telling you, the vibes are absolutely rancid tonight." Duno whispers, his voice cracking. He grips a jagged piece of wood he's been hidden-sanding against the floor for three hours. "That Freeman guard with the scarred lip was looking at us like we were literal NPCs about to be farmed."
Wolfgang, leaning back against the cold masonry, spits into the straw. "Let them come. I'm actually so done with this tutorial. If I have to do one more 'Countermarch' drill without actually hitting something, I'm going to lose my mind. I'm ready to crash-out, for real."
"Stay low, Wolfgang..." Minh says, his voice a low, steady anchor despite the visible tremor in his soot-stained hands. He sits cross-legged, watching the heavy oak door. "We don't have weapons. We have straw and splinters. If something slides in here, we don't fight fair. We swarm. Jame, you're the biggest unit we've got. You take the front."
Jame, a mountain of a teenager whose shoulders seem to touch both sides of the hallway, shifts uncomfortably. His face is pale in the moonlight filtering through the high slits. "Bro, why is it always me? I'm literally a pacifist. I was going for a nursing degree."
"Because you have the hitbox of a tank, man," Joon-soo snaps, his jaw working overtime. He's vibrating with a nervous, aggressive energy. "Just stand there and look menacing. Dierk, where are you?"
From a shadow so deep it seems to swallow light, Dierk's voice drifts out, edgy and detached. "I'm behind the pillar. I've got a sharpened spoon and zero chill. If they enter the perimeter, they're getting deleted."
The air suddenly shifts. From beneath the heavy door, a series of wet, chattering sounds begin to leak in—a high-pitched, manic skittering that sounds like thousands of cockroaches made of meat. The yellow, predatory eyes of a goblin swarm begin to peer through the cracks.
"Incoming!" Minh hisses, standing up. "Jame, now! Wall up!"
The door creaks open just an inch—enough for a swarm of small, moss-skinned creatures to pour through. They are hideous, with long, spindly limbs and needle-teeth, expecting to find the soft, sleeping flesh of uninitiated "carcasses."
"Oh hell no! Look at these low-res gremlins!" Duno screams, charging forward as the first goblin lunges. He swings his jagged wood, catching the creature mid-air and sending it thudding against the stone. "Get back, you nasty little ankle-biters!"
The barracks erupts into a chaotic, desperate brawl. Jame lets out a guttural, reluctant roar, using his massive arms to shove a cluster of goblins back into the doorframe. "Get! Out! Of! My! Personal! Space!" he yells, his masculine frame acting as a human bulkhead.
Joon-soo is a blur of motion next to him, kicking and punching with a frantic, hotheaded ferocity. "This is so mid! You guys aren't even boss-level!" he shrieks, grabbing a goblin by its spindly neck and slamming it into the floor. "Minh! They're flanking left!"
"Wolfgang, Dierk, left side! Use the straw!" Minh orders, stepping back to see the whole room. He spots a cluster of goblins climbing the bunks. "Throw the bedding! Smother them!"
Wolfgang doesn't need to be told twice. He grabs a massive armful of moldy straw and flings it over a group of chattering vermin, leaping onto the pile with reckless abandon. "Get cooked! Get absolutely cooked!" he yells, his fists working like pistons through the hay.
Dierk appears from the shadows behind a goblin that had been reaching for Minh's leg. With a cold, clinical shove, he sends the creature face-first into the wall. "L !" Dierk mutters, disappearing back into the dark. "Imagine losing to a guy with a spoon."
The fight is animalistic and raw. The teens aren't soldiers yet, but they are terrified, and that terror has turned into a jagged, lethal edge. They use their fists, their elbows, and broken bed slats to beat back the mossy tide. The stone house is filled with the sounds of grunts, the wet thwack of impact, and the screeching of the retreating goblins.
"Is that all you got?" Joon-soo pants, his face smeared with green goblin ichor. He's standing over a pile of twitching creatures, his chest heaving. "My grandmother hits harder than you tiny freaks!"
Suddenly, the temperature in the room spikes. The air begins to hum with a low, vibrating frequency that makes the marrow in their bones ache. The shadows at the doorway are banished by a sudden, blinding orange glow.
The goblins, sensing a predator far greater than the teenagers, begin to shriek in genuine terror, scrambling away from the entrance.
A man steps into the frame. He isn't armored like Aguilar; he wears deep crimson robes that seem to smoke at the edges. His eyes are not cold flint, but glowing embers. This is the Warmage. He looks over the room, his gaze lingering on Minh's organized line and the piles of beaten vermin.
"Mmm. The batch hath not been found wanting," the Warmage speaks. His voice is like the crackle of a forest fire—deep, ancient, and utterly devoid of empathy. "They possess the hunger of the cornered rat. It is... sufficient."
Minh stands tall, despite the way his knees want to give out. "We passed your little 'vibe check'?" he asks, his voice trembling but defiant. "Now get these things off us."
The Warmage doesn't answer the boy directly. He raises a hand, his fingers weaving a complex, glowing sigil in the air. The noble, archaic power of his station radiates from him, making the teens shield their eyes.
"The infestation hath served its purpose. Now, let the dross be purged," the Warmage intones, his voice rising in power. "In the name of the Heilop, I cast the cleansing breath! Consume the vermin, leave the steel!"
He snaps his fingers.
A wave of concentrated, magical heat rolls through the room. It doesn't burn the teenagers, but it passes over them like a hot summer wind. The goblins, however, erupt into instant, silent ash. In a flash of blinding light, the chattering stops. The wet moss smell is replaced by the sterile scent of ozone and carbon.
The Warmage lowers his hand, the orange glow in his eyes fading to a dull simmer. He looks at the exhausted Earthlings huddled in the scorched straw.
"Rest, ye shards of the void," he commands, his tone icy and final. "Tomorrow, the march begins. Ye have proven ye can kill in the dark. Now, ye shall learn to die in the light."
He turns and vanishes into the night, the heavy oak door slamming shut with a magical finality.
The silence returns, heavier than before.
"Okay, so," Duno says, breaking the quiet with a shaky breath. "The fire guy is officially the scariest person I've ever seen. Can we go back to Aguilar? I miss the 'whelps' and 'crows' talk."
"Shut up, Duno," Joon-soo mutters, collapsing into the remaining straw. "Just... shut up and sleep."
Minh remains standing for a moment longer, looking at the spot where the Warmage stood. He didn't even look at us like we were people, Minh thinks, his heart finally slowing down. He looked at us like we were a 'batch.' Like bread in an oven.
He lies down, closing his eyes, but his hand remains gripped tightly around a broken piece of wood. The tenth day is over, and the "Carcasses" are ready for the world outside the walls.
...
The eleventh day arrives with the sun hanging low and heavy, a pale disc filtered through the lingering haze of the warmage's fires. The air in the pentagonal fort has grown thinner, colder, and the dust on the training grounds has been packed into a hard, unforgiving crust by the endless march of boots.
Officer Aguilar reappears at the head of the formation. He is no longer the pristine, golden-clad icon of authority from the first week. His armor is smudged with soot and grease, a dent visible in his left pauldron, and his cloak is frayed at the hem. He looks like a man who has spent the last forty-eight hours drowning his romantic sorrows in a bottle, yet his presence still carries that suffocating, heavy weight.
He halts his warhorse before the line of Earthlings. Minh, Joon-soo, and the others stand in perfect, eerie silence—the silence of a machine waiting for its operator.
"Ye shards of the void, hearken to the grace of the Crown!" Aguilar's voice is hoarse, but it carries a sharp, mocking edge. He rolls a piece of parchment between his gauntlets. "The mission to the reaches of Mikhland draws nigh. Know that thou art not merely fodder; thou art participants in a holy ledger of restitution!"
He leans forward in his saddle, his eyes narrowing as he begins to break down the mathematics of their lives. "When the reward is secured, ten percent shall be cast into the Federation's vault to wash away the debts of Heilop. Seventy-five percent is the divine right of the nobility and the coffers of this sacred province. Seven percent," he taps his chest with a heavy finger, "is reserved for the hand that guides thee—the officer of this unit."
Minh's eyes flick to Joon-soo. Joon-soo's jaw is twitching, his fingers tightening around the shaft of his spear.
"And for thee? For the shivering wretches who carry the pike?" Aguilar lets out a dry, rattling laugh. "Three percent shall be divided among thy ranks. A pittance, perhaps, but a pittance that marks thee as more than cattle!"
A boy near the front, a mathlete from Chicago named Leo, begins blinking rapidly, his lips moving as he calculates. He raises a trembling hand. "Wait... does that mean three percent is divided among the whole unit? Like, all one hundred of us share that tiny slice?"
Aguilar tilts his head in a patronizing, majestic gesture. "Dost thou question the bounty? Aye, whelp. Divided among the survivors. Thou art free to spend that silver on whatever fleeting comforts thy calloused hands can grasp—be it ale to drown thy fears or a trinket to remember the world thou hast lost."
Aguilar gestures broadly to the horizon, to the dark forests beyond the walls. "Be grateful! Thine Earthling comrades who toil in the lightless deep of the mines or rot in the timber-woods shall die with naught but the bitter taste of dirt in their mouths. Thou hast been granted the rare, golden privilege of social mobility! Thou canst own assets! Thou canst die with a coin in thy pocket!"
"This guy is literally trying to 'Boss Babe' us into a war zone," Duno whispers, his face twisted in a sneer. "He's really out here pitching slavery with a side of commission. Total scam energy."
"Three percent," Wolfgang mutters, spitting into the dust. "I've had tips on DoorDash better than the price of my life. That's actually insane. We're basically fighting for a bag of chips and a 'good job' sticker."
Joon-soo looks at Minh, his eyes burning with a dark, hotheaded fire. "Minh, tell me you're not buying this. He's talking about us dying like it's a career choice."
Minh stays silent, his face a mask of cold, analytical calm, though his spear-tip tremors just slightly. "It doesn't matter if we buy it, Joon-soo. The ledger is already signed. He's just telling us the price of the ink."
Aguilar continues to boast, describing the "glory" of the Mikhland mission, framing the impending peril as an act of mercy from the Federation. The teens stand in the shadow of the great stone wall, where the air is cold and the ground is damp.
In the back of the formation, where the shadows fall long and jagged like teeth, a quiet, hollow voice cuts through Aguilar's posturing. It belongs to a boy who hasn't spoken in three days—a boy who watched his best friend get dragged away to the Deep-Drudge pits on Day 4.
"...But they didn't have to die," the boy murmurs.
The silence that follows is devastating. It ripples through the ranks like a physical shock, stalling Aguilar's tongue. The officer's face darkens, his noble mask slipping to reveal the jagged cruelty beneath. But even he seems to feel the weight of the collective realization hanging in the air.
Copper and silver cannot buy back the souls of teenagers bartered for a lord's debt.
Aguilar sneers, pulling his reins tight. "Silence is the only currency I shall accept now! To the drills! Refine the Shield Wall! If thou art too slow to catch a coin, thou shalt surely be fast enough to catch a blade!"
The twelveth day blends into the eleventh, a blur of sweat and repetitive motion. They return to their spears, the wood now worn smooth against their palms, the splinters having long since been replaced by thick, ugly callouses. They move in the synchronized rhythms Minh taught them—the Shield Wall, the Schiltron, the Countermarch.
"Step! Pivot! Hold!" Minh calls out. His voice has lost its teenage inflection; it is now the monotonous, rhythmic drone of a drill sergeant.
The Earthling teens' faces have hardened. The softness of their "Fresh" lives—the memories of high school hallways, gaming chairs, and family dinners—is being polished away by the grit of the fort. Their skin is a map of bruises and welts, their eyes hollow pits of survival instinct.
As they march, they reach into their pockets and feel the "Fresh" cards they were given upon arrival. The cards are now grimy, folded, and stained with the sulfur of the matchlocks. They are no longer identities; they are serial numbers.
"Check your matches," Minh commands, his eyes scanning the row. "Row one, fire. Row two, cycle."
The clack-thud of the spears and the click-snap of the matchlocks create a rhythmic, industrial sound. They are no longer a group of kids; they are a shipment of expendable assets, organized and ready for transport.
On the horizon, the storm of Mikhland gathers—a dark, roiling mass of uncertainty. The pentagonal fort, once a terrifying prison, now feels like a mere waiting room for a much larger horror.
Joon-soo looks at the gold-clad officer who is watching them with a greedy, calculating eye. "He really thinks three percent is going to make us fight harder," he whispers to Minh as they transition into the Boar's Head formation.
"He doesn't care if we fight hard," Minh replies, his voice cold and flat as he adjusts the line. "He just needs us to stay in formation long enough for him to get his seven percent. Don't look at the coin, Joon-soo. Look at the man next to you. That's the only asset that matters now."
The sun climbs over the fort, illuminating the grimy, determined faces of a hundred boys who have already begun to count the cost of their survival in blood, not silver.