_____________
Meika watched the vision unfold before her eyes as Cody fired his revolver and used his gravitational magic to intercept the waves of flame Dwayne hurled toward him. The collision of their magic sent dust and debris into the air while nearby Guardsmen scrambled to put distance between themselves and the duel, instinctively recognizing that they were witnessing something far beyond an ordinary battle.
For the past two days, the vision had followed her everywhere. It lingered in the back of her mind when she tried to sleep, resurfaced whenever she closed her eyes, and haunted every attempt she made to convince herself that it could still be prevented. Now, as Cody and the mysterious man exchanged blow after blow across the battlefield, she could no longer tell where the memory ended and reality began.
She tried to rush forward, desperate to reach him before the future completed itself, but Mey and Shannah immediately pulled her back before she could take more than a few steps.
"Meika, stop!"
"We have to help him!" she cried, struggling against their grip as her eyes remained fixed on the duel. "We can't just stand here and watch!"
Another burst of fire erupted across the battlefield, forcing Cody to twist the flames away with a surge of gravitational magic. The sudden flash illuminated the smoke hanging over the outskirts and sent a familiar sensation racing through her body.
Her breath caught.
For an instant, the battlefield disappeared beneath memories she wished she could forget. The flames reminded her of Cheapsake, of burning streets and choking smoke, and of the helpless terror she had felt as the fire consumed everything around her. She knew the battle before her was real and that the fire belonged to someone else entirely, yet her body reacted as though the distance between past and present had suddenly collapsed.
The heat was gone.
The danger was different.
But the fear felt the same.
As Mey tightened his grip on her arm and Shannah pleaded with her to stay back, Meika could do little more than watch as the future she had spent two days desperately trying to prevent continued unfolding before her eyes.
The duel gradually carried the two men farther across the battlefield, drawing the attention of soldiers on both sides as waves of fire and distorted gravity tore through the shattered landscape. Wherever they moved, the fighting around them began to thin, men instinctively retreating from their path until the space between them widened into something that felt less like a battlefield and more like a deliberate arena carved out by force.
Another collision of magic sent a shockwave rolling across the outskirts, rattling broken walls and scattering loose debris across the ground. As the dust settled, Meika found herself straining to listen, realizing that the brief lull in the fighting had allowed their voices to carry farther than before.
"Look around you," Dwayne called, extending a hand toward the battlefield. "The Guards are falling back, the Confederacy controls half the provinces, and this nation is tearing itself apart. This is what your leadership has brought us."
Cody's gaze briefly swept across the battlefield before returning to Dwayne.
"Looks like a civil war to me."
The response was so matter-of-fact that it caught even some nearby Guardsmen off guard. Dwayne's expression tightened, clearly expecting anger or defiance rather than calm dismissal.
"You still don't understand."
"No," Cody replied, adjusting his grip on the revolver, "I understand perfectly well. I understand that people are dying, I understand that families are being torn apart, and I understand that you've convinced yourself all of this was necessary."
As he spoke, gravitational energy rippled outward from him, lifting fragments of stone and dust into the air.
"What I don't understand is why you think that argument should matter to me."
The remark drew a few uneasy reactions from nearby Guardsmen before silence returned almost immediately. Dwayne ignored them entirely.
"You think this nation can survive forever?"
A faint smile appeared on Cody's face.
"I've spent most of my life listening to people explain why this Republic is about to collapse. Every crisis is supposed to be the one that finally breaks it, every generation produces someone convinced they're witnessing the end of it all, and somehow the nation keeps disappointing them."
The flames around Dwayne intensified, heat distorting the air between them.
"You built a nation that abandoned its own people."
For the first time, Cody's expression lost some of its ease.
"No," he said quietly. "We built a nation that gave people a voice. It was never perfect, and it isn't perfect now, but there is a difference between trying to fix something and deciding it needs to be destroyed."
His gaze remained locked on Dwayne.
"And somewhere along the way, you stopped seeing that difference."
The words settled heavily between them as fire and gravity pressed against one another, neither man willing to yield, neither able to convince the other. It no longer felt like an argument so much as the final boundary between two irreconcilable truths.
Dwayne studied him for a long moment, then spoke without the earlier force in his voice.
"Then you'll watch it burn with the rest of them."
Cody did not respond.
That silence marked the end of the conversation.
Dwayne's attention shifted away from Cody for the first time since the duel began. His gaze moved slowly across the battlefield, taking in the collapsing lines, the scattered resistance, and the chaos stretching into the distance. And then he saw her.
Meika.
Still near the rear of the engagement, partially shielded by Mey and Shannah as she fought against their grip. For a moment, Dwayne did not move, his expression narrowing as recognition gave way to calculation.
She should not be here.
The thought settled into place with quiet certainty.
The air around him changed.
Fire did not erupt immediately. Instead, it gathered deliberately at his side, shaping itself into form as though answering a decision rather than an impulse.
Cody noticed the shift instantly.
"Don't."
Dwayne did not look back.
"She's not supposed to be here," he said.
That was all.
The ground beneath him fractured as heat expanded outward in a sudden pulse.
Cody moved at the same time, but the decision had already been made.
A concentrated surge of flame tore across the battlefield in a straight line, cutting through smoke and broken terrain as it raced toward Meika's position.
Mey saw it first.
There was no time to think. No time to call out. Only movement.
"Move!"
His grip broke from Meika as he shoved her backward with all his strength, sending her stumbling out of the path of the attack.
The strike hit him instead.
Heat and force tore through the ground as Mey's body was thrown sideways, crashing through dust and shattered stone before coming to rest near the remains of a broken defensive position.
Silence followed the blast.
Not peace.
Only the absence of sound where something had just ended.
Meika scrambled up almost immediately, eyes searching through the smoke until she found him.
"Mey!"
For a moment, he lay still.
Then his hand shifted slightly, as though trying to push himself up.
It never finished the motion.
His body went limp. And the battlefield did not pause for them.
Even as dust and smoke drifted through the shattered outskirts of Revilla, even as distant commands were still being shouted and gunfire continued to crack across broken stone, the world refused to acknowledge what had just changed.
But Meika was no longer watching the battle.
She was staring at Mey.
He had fallen out of sight for only a moment within the chaos of movement and debris, swallowed briefly by the aftermath of the strike that had torn across the field. When Meika finally broke free of her shock and forced herself forward, it was not panic that drove her first, but instinct.
Training.
What little she had absorbed from long hours spent at the field hospital surged to the surface before anything else could take shape.
"He's down," she said quickly, almost mechanically, as she reached him.
She dropped to her knees beside him without hesitation, hands already moving as she leaned in to assess him. Her fingers pressed carefully at his wrist first, searching for a pulse beneath the dust and heat still lingering in the air, then moved to his shoulder as she tried to reposition him just enough to check his breathing.
"Come on," she murmured under her breath, more focused than emotional, as though focus alone could keep the situation from becoming worse. "Don't do this right now."
Behind her, Shannah said something, but the words barely registered.
Meika tilted her head closer, watching for any sign of movement in his chest, any reflex, any response at all. For a moment she thought she felt it, the faintest rise beneath her hand, and relief flickered through her so quickly it almost made her dizzy.
"He's breathing," she said immediately, turning slightly as if confirmation would make it more real. "He's still… he's still… "
Then the stillness settled in again.
Just absence where motion should have been.
Her hands tightened slightly against his uniform as the realization struggled to form into something she could accept.
"Mey?" she said again, quieter this time.
No answer came.
Only then did the training begin to fracture under something far heavier.
Her breath caught, uneven now, as her focus broke between what she knew how to do and what she could not stop herself from feeling. She pressed again at his wrist, harder this time, as if insistence could correct the result.
"Hey," she whispered, sharper now, losing the control she had started with. "No, no, no! Don't stop, just… just wake up."
The battlefield continued to burn around them, distant and meaningless, as though it belonged to a different world entirely.
And Meika, still on her knees beside him, could no longer tell whether she was trying to treat a patient…
or refusing to accept what she already understood.
National Guardsmen quickly moved to surround Dwayne, tightening their formation as if instinctively recognizing that the moment Cody had been waiting for was finally within reach. Orders were shouted across the broken outskirts, shifting the focus of the battlefield once again as the duel between fire and gravity began to draw in every remaining unit still capable of fighting.
Cody did not hesitate.
The instant his attention left Dwayne, he was already moving, cutting through smoke and debris toward where Meika knelt in the ruins of the rear line.
Dwayne noticed the shift almost immediately.
His eyes followed Cody for only a moment before settling on the cluster of figures near the ground. Something cold and deliberate passed through his expression, as though the battlefield had just revealed a detail he had already accounted for.
Then he turned away.
"Too late," he said quietly.
Fire gathered at his side once more, not yet released, but held in place like a decision waiting for execution.
__________
Meika barely noticed Cody arriving.
Her attention remained locked on Mey as she continued trying to stabilize him, hands moving in quick, practiced motions that came more from memory than certainty. She checked for breath again, then pulse, refusing to accept the silence that kept returning no matter how many times she tried.
"Stay with me," she murmured under her breath, voice tight with control she was starting to lose. "You're fine. Just… stay with me."
Footsteps broke through the edge of her awareness.
She didn't look up.
"Meika."
Cody's voice was closer than it should have been in a place like this.
Still, she didn't stop.
"I said not now," she replied, sharper this time, as her fingers pressed against Mey's wrist again. "I need a second, he's not responding right."
Another set of footsteps arrived behind Cody.
"Meika…"
Shannah's voice was quieter, but it carried something strained underneath it, as if she had been running long before she reached them.
Cody knelt beside Meika without forcing her attention away from Mey. Instead, he looked over the situation first, taking in the way her hands moved, the way she refused to stop, the way she was trying to hold onto procedure even as everything around it was breaking.
Then his gaze settled on Mey.
A brief silence followed.
Behind them, the battlefield continued to fracture, orders shouted, formations shifting, the distant pressure of Dwayne being contained by encircling Guardsmen, but it all felt removed now, as if it belonged to a world that had already started to separate itself from this moment.
Cody finally exhaled.
"Kiddo," he said gently.
That word cut through everything.
Meika's hands slowed.
Not enough to stop, but it was enough to hesitate.
"I need you to look at me," Cody continued, voice steady but low. "Just for a second."
Shannah moved closer beside her, hesitant but present, her hand hovering near Meika's shoulder as if unsure whether touching her would help or break what was left of her focus.
"Meika," Shannah said softly. "Please."
For a moment, Meika didn't respond to either of them.
Her eyes stayed on Mey.
Then, slowly, the realization she had been resisting began to press through the space between what she was doing and what she was no longer able to change.
And her breathing finally faltered.
___________
National Guardsmen stormed the building with bayonets fixed as Confederate militiamen began falling back from their positions. The pounding against the entrance grew louder with every passing second, accompanied by shouted orders and the unmistakable sound of boots rushing through the corridors as the Republic steadily closed its grip around the holdout.
Shroud remained near the window, her attention divided between the battlefield outside and the Vice President seated across from her. Despite being a prisoner in a rapidly deteriorating situation, Karlos appeared far calmer than he had any right to be.
"The future is never set in stone, Kyra."
The words followed her as she turned toward the shattered glass.
Smoke drifted across the battlefield beyond the building, obscuring portions of the fighting as National Guardsmen pushed forward against the retreating Confederates. Through the haze, she caught sight of Cody moving across the ruins with an unconscious young man in his arms while Meika and another girl followed close behind.
The sight immediately drew her attention.
That young man should not have been there.
Meika should not have been there.
Several pieces had already begun falling into places she had never anticipated.
Behind her, Karlos gave a quiet laugh.
"You know," he said, settling back in his chair despite the chaos unfolding around them, "for someone who spent so much time talking about destiny, you've had a remarkably difficult time predicting people."
Kyra's gaze shifted back toward him.
"I wouldn't be celebrating yet."
"Celebrating?" Karlos smiled. "The Guards are about to kick down your door, Cody is still alive, Meika is still alive, and from the look of things, you've just watched something happen that wasn't supposed to."
The pounding against the entrance intensified, causing dust to drift from the ceiling above them.
"You talk too much for a hostage."
"And you put too much faith in certainty."
The response came easily, carrying the confidence of a man who had spent his career arguing with people convinced they had all the answers.
"You built your plans around a future you thought couldn't change, but that's always been the problem with predictions. The moment real people become involved, they stop behaving the way they're supposed to."
Kyra's expression hardened, though not quickly enough to prevent Karlos from noticing the brief flicker of uncertainty that crossed her face.
"There it is," he said quietly.
The smile never left his face.
"I've been waiting to see that look."
Outside, the battle continued to shift against the Confederates while inside the building, the assault drew ever closer. The door shuddered beneath another impact, followed immediately by splintering wood and shouted commands from the corridor beyond.
For the first time since Karlos had known her, Kyra seemed less concerned with what was happening around her than with what it meant.
The future had always been her certainty.
Now it was becoming a question.
A curse escaped her lips as she stepped away from the window and turned toward the rear of the building. Whatever answers remained to be found, they would not be discovered here.
Moments later, as National Guardsmen finally broke through the entrance and flooded into the holdout, Shroud vanished into the shadows and made her escape.
____________
The field hospital had become a frenzy of activity by the time Cody arrived. Medics moved rapidly between rows of wounded soldiers while orderlies carried stretchers through crowded aisles, their voices blending into a constant stream of shouted instructions, casualty reports, and requests for supplies. Every available cot was occupied, and the smell of medicine, smoke, and sweat hung heavily beneath the canvas tents.
Mara was helping stabilize a wounded Guardsman when movement near the entrance caught her attention.
At first, she assumed it was simply another group of casualties arriving from the outskirts. Then she recognized Cody pushing through the crowded ward, and her concern immediately sharpened. What truly stopped her, however, was the sight of the three figures surrounding him.
Mey was unconscious in Cody's arms while Meika and Shannah followed close behind, both covered in dirt and dust from the battlefield. The sight was so unexpected that Mara found herself frozen for a moment before training and instinct finally forced her into motion.
"Mey?"
The name escaped her as she hurried toward them.
She had spent nearly every day of the past month working alongside Meika in the field hospital. What had begun as simple supervision had gradually developed into something closer to mentorship. She had watched Meika learn how to clean wounds, organize supplies, assist exhausted medics, and comfort frightened soldiers who arrived from the front lines. Seeing her now, standing silently behind Cody as he carried an unconscious Mey into the ward, filled Mara with a sense of dread she struggled to suppress.
"What happened?" she asked as she reached them.
No one answered immediately.
Cody's expression was enough to tell her the situation was serious, while Meika appeared so focused on Mey that she barely seemed aware of her surroundings. Shannah looked little better, her face marked by the same exhaustion and shock that Mara had seen countless times in soldiers returning from their first major battle.
Realizing answers could wait, Mara reached for Mey's wrist and searched for a pulse.
The familiar sounds of the hospital faded into the background as she concentrated.
The heartbeat was weak and uneven, but it was there.
Relief washed through her, though it was quickly tempered by professional concern.
"Get him onto a cot," she said, already beginning to channel healing magic through her hands. "Move."
Nearby medics immediately cleared a path while Cody carried Mey deeper into the ward. Mara walked beside him, maintaining the flow of restorative magic as soft currents of light spread from her fingertips and across Mey's injuries.
When they finally reached an empty cot, Cody carefully lowered him onto the bed while Mara immediately began examining the extent of the damage. Several medics joined her without needing instruction, gathering supplies and preparing additional healing spells as the field hospital continued to operate around them.
Only after she was satisfied that Mey was receiving proper attention did Mara allow herself to look away from the cot.
Her eyes immediately found Meika.
The girl stood several feet away, staring at Mey with an intensity that bordered on obsession. There were no obvious injuries on her, no burns, cuts, or wounds severe enough to explain the look on her face, yet Mara found that detail more unsettling than any visible injury could have been.
Over the past month, she had seen frightened soldiers, grieving families, and exhausted medics pushed to their limits by the war. The expression in Meika's eyes reminded her of those people far more than it reminded her of a field hospital volunteer.
Mara approached her slowly.
"Meika."
The girl looked up, though only after a noticeable delay.
For the first time since they had met, Mara saw something in her that she had never expected to see.
Not panic.
Not confusion.
Guilt.
It sat heavily behind her eyes, so obvious that Mara wondered how anyone could miss it.
Without thinking, she rested a hand on Meika's shoulder.
"He's alive," she said gently. "His pulse is weak, but it's there. We're going to do everything we can for him."
Meika's gaze immediately shifted back toward the cot.
Mara followed it and found herself understanding the problem almost instantly.
The reassurance hadn't seemed to help.
Instead of looking relieved, Meika's attention remained fixed on Mey, her expression tightening whenever one of the healers adjusted a spell or checked his condition.
Mara had seen that look before. It was the look of someone who had already decided they were responsible, whether they truly were or not.
Mara's healing magic continued to flow through Mey's body as several medics worked alongside her, quietly exchanging observations while monitoring his condition. The frantic urgency that had accompanied his arrival gradually settled into a tense vigilance as the immediate danger passed and uncertainty took its place.
Meika remained beside the cot throughout it all.
She watched every movement the medics made, searching their faces for reassurance that none of them seemed willing to give. Whenever Mara adjusted her spell or one of the healers checked Mey's condition, Meika found herself hoping that this would be the moment he opened his eyes, sat up, or gave some sign that everything would return to normal.
Instead, he remained motionless.
The field hospital continued to operate around them. Wounded soldiers were carried in from the outskirts, exhausted Guardsmen searched for places to rest, and medics hurried between patients with the practiced efficiency of people who no longer had the luxury of slowing down. The constant activity should have made the hospital feel alive, yet to Meika it only emphasized how still Mey remained.
After several minutes, Mara finally stepped back from the cot and allowed herself a careful breath.
"His condition is stable," she said. "The healing magic is helping, but he's still unconscious."
The words were meant to be reassuring.
To Meika, they weren't.
Stable meant he was alive.
It also meant he still hadn't woken up.
Shannah moved closer and gently rested a hand against her arm.
"He's going to pull through," she said softly.
Meika wanted to believe her.
She wanted to believe Mara.
She wanted to believe that everything would somehow be alright.
Instead, all she could see was the battlefield.
The memory replayed itself relentlessly. She remembered struggling against Mey's grip while trying to reach Cody. She remembered refusing to listen when he told her to stop. Most of all, she remembered the moment he pushed her aside.
Every time the memory returned, it ended the same way.
Mey was lying unconscious because he had chosen to protect her.
The realization sat like a weight in her chest, growing heavier each time she tried to convince herself otherwise.
Without saying anything, she turned away from the cot.
Neither Mara nor Shannah noticed at first. Their attention remained focused on Mey while Cody spoke quietly with several medics nearby. Meika slipped through the crowded rows of beds and wounded soldiers until she reached the edge of the hospital tent and stepped outside.
The evening air greeted her with a welcome chill.
Smoke still drifted above the distant battlefield, carried by a steady breeze that softened the scent of gunpowder without fully erasing it. Beyond the hospital, the camp had begun settling into the uneasy rhythm that always followed a battle. Soldiers moved between supply wagons, officers exchanged reports, and stretcher teams continued bringing in the last of the wounded.
Meika walked until the sounds of the hospital faded behind her.
Only when she was alone did she finally stop.
For a while, she simply stood there.
The vision had shown Cody in danger.
She had been so certain that she could change what she had seen if she reached him in time. Every decision she had made over the past two days had been driven by that belief.
Now Mey was unconscious.
The future had changed, but not in the way she had hoped.
"If I had stayed..." she whispered.
The words barely carried beyond her lips.
She lowered her head and closed her eyes, but the memories followed her there as well. No matter how many times she replayed the day in her mind, every path seemed to lead back to the same conclusion.
Mey had been hurt protecting her.
The evening air beyond the field hospital carried the lingering scent of smoke from the outskirts, though the battle itself had largely faded into the distance. Behind them, medics continued moving between tents and cots, their voices blending together into a steady hum of activity that never truly stopped, even after the fighting ended.
Meika sat quietly on a supply crate near the edge of the camp. She had not intended to come this far from the hospital, but the thought of standing beside Mey's cot any longer had become unbearable. Every time she looked at him, she found herself replaying the same moment over and over again until it felt impossible to think about anything else.
She didn't notice Cody approaching until he lowered himself onto a crate beside her.
For a while, neither of them spoke. Cody seemed content to sit in silence, watching the last traces of daylight disappear beyond the horizon while giving her the space to gather her thoughts. Eventually, he glanced toward her and immediately recognized the expression she was trying so hard to hide.
"You've been carrying something around since before the battle," he said. "This isn't just about Mey."
Meika stared down at her hands.
Part of her wanted to deny it, but she was too exhausted to pretend.
"I thought I could stop it."
Cody frowned slightly.
"Stop what?"
For several seconds, she searched for a way to explain it that wouldn't sound ridiculous. The problem was that every explanation sounded impossible the moment she said it out loud.
"Two days ago, I started seeing things."
That earned a confused look from Cody, though he remained patient enough to let her continue.
"It was always the same thing. The same battle. The same people. Every time I tried to sleep, every time I closed my eyes, it would come back."
As she spoke, Cody's expression gradually shifted from confusion to concern.
"You mean you were dreaming about the battle?"
Meika shook her head.
"It wasn't a dream."
The certainty in her voice immediately caught his attention.
"I don't know what it was," she admitted, "but I knew it was real. I saw things that hadn't happened yet."
Cody remained silent, allowing her to continue at her own pace.
"I saw you."
That finally surprised him enough to interrupt.
"You saw me?"
She nodded.
"I saw you fighting someone. At the time I didn't know who he was, but after today..." Her voice faltered slightly. "It was him."
Neither of them needed to say Dwayne's name.
The memory was still too fresh.
Cody remained silent for a moment.
Part of him wanted to dismiss it as stress, exhaustion, or the product of too many sleepless nights spent worrying about the war. Yet the more he thought about it, the harder that explanation became to accept. Meika had described the battle before it happened. She had known where he would be, and she had recognized Dwayne despite never having met him before that day.
Whatever she had seen, it was not something Cody could easily explain away.
Meika drew a slow breath before continuing.
"I kept seeing the same fight over and over again, and every time it ended with you completely alone. There weren't any Guardsmen around you. There weren't any reinforcements. It looked like nobody could reach you in time."
Cody listened without speaking, though the revelation was clearly catching him off guard.
"I thought you were going to die," she finally admitted.
The confession hung between them.
As strange as the story sounded, Cody could see the sincerity behind every word. More importantly, he could finally understand why she had been so determined to reach the battlefield despite the danger.
She hadn't been trying to prove anything.
She hadn't been looking for adventure.
She had been terrified.
The realization settled heavily in his chest.
For all the years he had spent protecting her, it had never occurred to him that one day she might try to protect him.
"I figured if I got there soon enough, I could change it," she said quietly. "Instead, Mey got hurt because of me."
Cody leaned back and folded his arms as he considered his response.
The temptation to immediately dismiss her guilt was strong, but experience had taught him that people rarely listened when they were hurting. They listened when they felt understood.
"Kiddo," he said, "do you know how many mistakes I've spent years blaming myself for?"
Meika glanced toward him.
"That's what guilt does. No matter what happens, it always finds another thing to blame."
A faint smile touched his face, though it never quite became humorous.
"When you've lived long enough, you start collecting moments you wish you could redo. You replay conversations, decisions, and battles in your head until you're convinced that changing one thing would somehow fix everything that followed."
His gaze drifted toward the hospital tents.
"The problem is that life doesn't work that way."
Meika looked unconvinced.
Cody wasn't surprised.
"If you'd stayed home, you would've spent the rest of your life wondering whether I needed help. If you'd reached me sooner, you would've found something else to blame. That's what guilt does. It keeps moving the finish line."
For the first time since the conversation began, Meika didn't immediately argue.
The thought lingered uncomfortably in her mind because part of her suspected he might be right.
Cody allowed the silence to settle before continuing.
"You went out there because you were scared for somebody you love. That's not something I'm going to hold against you."
The words were simple, but they carried more weight than any speech could have.
"You made a choice, Mey made a choice, and Dwayne made a choice. The only person responsible for what happened to Mey is the man who launched the attack."
Meika lowered her gaze.
The guilt was still there.
The fear was still there.
Nothing Cody said could erase either of them.
Yet as the evening settled around them and the field hospital continued its work in the distance, she found that the weight no longer felt quite as impossible to carry on her own.
__________
A medic pressed a damp cloth against the cut on Karlos's forehead, drawing a slight wince from him as the sting spread through the fresh wound. Around him, the field hospital remained busy with the aftermath of the battle, though the voices and movement seemed distant compared to the conversation unfolding beside his cot.
Ken Drick stood nearby with his arms folded across his chest, his expression grim as he processed everything Karlos had told him.
For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
Finally, Ken Drick broke the silence.
"You're telling me Kyra is Shroud?"
Karlos nodded; the memory of the encounter still felt unreal. Even now, part of him wanted to believe he had been mistaken.
"I saw her myself."
Ken Drick's jaw tightened.
"And she's been leading the Confederacy."
It wasn't a question.
Karlos lowered his gaze.
"At least part of it."
The answer settled heavily between them.
For months, rumors had spread throughout the Republic about the mysterious figure directing Confederate operations from the shadows. Entire campaigns had been attributed to Shroud's influence, and more than one Federal commander had blamed recent defeats on the strategist nobody seemed capable of finding.
Now they finally had an answer.
Neither man found comfort in it.
Ken Drick remained silent.
The disbelief on his face had not faded. If anything, it seemed to deepen with each passing second as he stared at the floor, trying and failing to reconcile the image of Shroud with the woman he had known for years.
None of it made sense.
Kyra had been there from the beginning. She had stood beside them during campaigns, debates, and crises that had nearly broken the Republic more than once. She had celebrated victories with them and mourned losses with them. There had been disagreements, certainly, but nothing that had ever suggested she was capable of this. Looking back, Ken Drick could recall arguments, frustrations, and moments where their opinions had sharply diverged, yet not a single memory prepared him for the possibility that she had been working against them.
"You're sure?" he finally asked.
The question sounded weak even to him.
Karlos understood why he asked it anyway.
"I wish I wasn't."
Ken Drick closed his eyes briefly. Part of him had hoped Karlos would say there had been a mistake, that the battle, exhaustion, or confusion had caused him to misidentify someone else. Instead, Karlos's certainty left little room for doubt.
A bitter laugh escaped him before he could stop it.
"Kyra," he muttered, shaking his head. "Of all people."
For years, the Republic's leadership had searched for Shroud's identity. Intelligence officers had compiled lists of suspects, military analysts had built profiles, and investigators had followed countless leads that ultimately led nowhere. Some believed Shroud was a foreign advisor operating beyond the Republic's borders. Others thought the figure was a disgruntled general or perhaps several Confederate officers sharing the same identity. Through all of it, nobody had seriously considered Kyra.
Ken Drick looked toward the crowded hospital ward where wounded soldiers occupied nearly every available cot.
"Do you know what the worst part is?" he asked quietly.
Karlos remained silent, sensing that the question was less for him and more for the man struggling to process the revelation.
"I can understand people leaving," Ken Drick said. "I can understand governors turning against us. I can understand provinces breaking away. Hell, I can even understand soldiers choosing the wrong side because they're angry, frightened, or convinced they're doing the right thing."
His gaze drifted across the wounded.
"But Kyra helped build this country."
The words carried none of the anger Karlos expected. They sounded closer to disappointment, the kind that only came when trust had been broken by someone you never imagined betraying it.
Karlos lowered his eyes. He had been wrestling with the same thought ever since discovering the truth. The Kyra he remembered and the woman behind the mask felt like two entirely different people, yet he knew they were the same.
The silence that followed settled heavily between them.
Eventually, Ken Drick lowered himself into a nearby chair and rubbed a hand across his face. For the first time since Karlos had known him, he looked genuinely lost. The confidence that usually anchored him seemed absent, replaced by the expression of a man who had just discovered that one of the foundations of his world had been quietly removed.
"Why?" he asked at last.
The question was not directed at Karlos, nor did he expect an answer. It was simply the thought he could not escape as he sat there surrounded by the wounded and listened to the sounds of a nation slowly coming apart around him.
Why Kyra?
And perhaps more troubling still, how long had she been preparing for this?
__________
Jazmin pushed through the crowded field hospital, her eyes moving across rows of cots as medics hurried between the wounded. The argument with Olivia and Ken Drick still lingered in the back of her mind, but exhaustion had long since smothered her frustration. The journey from Revilla had been filled with rumors, casualty reports, and conflicting accounts of the battle, and every mile had only made her anxiety worse.
By the time she arrived, all she wanted was confirmation that Meika was safe.
The hospital was overflowing with Guardsmen injured during the fighting. Healers moved from patient to patient while orderlies carried supplies through narrow aisles, weaving between cots packed so closely together that there was barely room to walk. Voices echoed beneath the canvas roof, blending into a constant hum of activity that made it difficult to focus on any single face.
Normally, the sheer scale of the operation would have caught her attention. Today, however, she barely noticed it as she searched the ward for her niece.
Her pace quickened as she moved deeper into the tent, scanning each row until her gaze finally settled on a familiar figure.
Cody sat beside one of the hospital cots near the center of the ward, and relief immediately washed through her. She had known he survived the battle, but seeing him alive with her own eyes was different from reading a report. That relief lasted only a moment before she noticed Meika asleep against his side with her head resting in his lap.
Jazmin slowed instinctively.
The sight dragged her back years into the past, not to the Great Fire of Cheapsake itself, but to the difficult days that followed it. She remembered visiting Cody after his recovery and finding Meika sitting beside him whenever she entered the room. The girl had barely left his side. At night, she would fall asleep leaning against him, unwilling to let him out of her sight for fear that if she looked away, he would disappear too.
Back then, Meika had been a frightened child trying to make sense of a tragedy she could not understand, and Jazmin had not seen that version of her in years. As Meika grew older, she became independent, stubborn, and more than capable of facing problems on her own. The insecure child who had clung to Cody after Cheapsake had gradually disappeared.
Yet looking at her now, Jazmin could not shake the feeling that she was seeing that same girl again, older but carrying the same look of exhaustion that came from having the world pulled out from beneath her.
"What happened?" Jazmin asked as she approached.
Cody looked up, and his expression told her immediately that the answer was not one she was going to like.
"Tough battle."
Jazmin shot him a look.
"Cody."
Her voice lowered.
"The last time I saw her sleeping like that was after Cheapsake."
The brief attempt at deflection disappeared from his face.
"I know."
Jazmin glanced toward Meika again. Even asleep, she looked exhausted. Dark circles lingered beneath her eyes, and her expression remained tense despite finally getting the rest she clearly needed.
"What happened?" she repeated.
This time Cody didn't avoid the question.
"Mey was injured protecting her."
Jazmin felt her stomach tighten.
"Injured?"
"He'll recover."
The answer did little to reassure her.
"How badly?"
"He was unconscious when we brought him in. The healers stabilized him, and he's improving, but..." Cody hesitated.
"But what?"
Cody looked down at Meika.
"She thinks it's her fault."
The realization struck Jazmin almost immediately. The exhaustion, the guilt written across Meika's face, and the fact that she had fallen asleep against Cody despite being far too old to seek comfort that way under normal circumstances suddenly fit together. Whatever had happened on that battlefield, Meika had convinced herself she was responsible for Mey's injuries.
Jazmin closed her eyes for a moment and exhaled slowly. Part of her wanted to be angry at the battle, at the circumstances that had put Meika there in the first place, and at whoever had forced her niece to carry a burden she was never meant to bear. Instead, she reached down and gently brushed a loose strand of hair away from Meika's face.
The gesture was soft. The look she gave Cody was not.
"How bad is it?"
Cody understood immediately that she was no longer asking about Mey.
"Bad enough that she's convinced this is all her fault."
The answer did not surprise Jazmin as much as she wished it had. Weeks earlier, Meika had come to her with stories of impossible visions. At first, Jazmin had hoped they were nothing more than nightmares brought on by stress and exhaustion, but every conversation afterward had only made her more concerned. The details had been too specific, and the fear in Meika's voice had been too genuine.
When the reports from the battle began arriving in Revilla, those concerns only grew worse. The battlefield had existed, Dwayne had existed, and Cody had come dangerously close to facing him alone. Everything Meika had described had happened, just not in the way she expected.
"She was trying to save you," Jazmin said quietly.
"I know."
"Instead Mey got hurt."
Cody nodded.
Jazmin looked down at her sleeping niece and felt her chest tighten. When Meika first told her about the visions, she had worried about what they meant. Now she was far more concerned about what they had done to her. Meika had crossed half the country carrying the belief that she could prevent a tragedy, only to watch someone nearly lose his life protecting her.
No wonder she looked exhausted.
No wonder she had fallen asleep beside Cody the moment she finally felt safe enough to stop fighting.
End Of Act 1