The drill did not begin with a whistle.

  It began with weight.

  Karael felt it the moment he stepped onto the field. Not heavier than usual. Sharper. Like the pressure had edges now, planes intersecting at odd angles beneath the stone. He slowed half a step without meaning to, boots adjusting as his body recalibrated.

  Around him, Group C filed in more cautiously than they used to.

  No one said anything.

  That alone told him this wasn’t routine.

  The quiet carried weight of its own. Cadets who talked through drills had learned the instructors tolerated noise. Silence meant everyone had already sensed the same thing he had.

  Jorrek stood off to the side with Selka and Administrator Kyne. Not Vell. Kyne was thinner, older, his uniform immaculate in a way that suggested distance from physical exertion. He watched the cadets like inventory.

  Not evaluating technique. Not posture. Counting outcomes before they happened.

  “Unit drill,” Jorrek said. “Live interference.”

  A low murmur rippled through the group.

  Live interference meant variables. Moving hazards. Pressure shifts that didn’t follow pattern. The kind of drill where cohesion mattered more than individual output.

  “Tomas,” Jorrek added. “You’re lead.”

  Karael felt it immediately.

  Not surprise. Confirmation.

  Leadership assignments in Group C were never random. Not when administrators were present.

  Tomas’s head lifted. His expression didn’t change, but something tight and satisfied flickered behind his eyes. He stepped forward, posture crisp, movements precise.

  “Yes, Instructor.”

  Malrec shot Karael a sideways look.

  “That’s not good,” he muttered.

  Karael didn’t respond. He was already watching the field.

  Markers flared to life. The ground segmented into uneven lanes, some widening, others narrowing unpredictably. Pressure nodes blinked into existence above them like faint stars.

  “Objective,” Jorrek said. “Cross the field. Maintain formation. Any fracture resets the unit.”

  Tomas turned to face them.

  “Pair up,” he said immediately. “Front line anchors, rear venters. No freelancing.”

  Malrec stiffened.

  “That’s not—”

  “Do you want a reset,” Tomas cut in calmly, “or do you want to finish.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  The question hung there.

  Karael saw the calculation happening in real time. Malrec’s jaw tightened. Seris stepped in smoothly, already adjusting her position to fill the gap.

  “Just move,” she said quietly.

  They moved.

  The pressure surged the instant they crossed the boundary.

  Not uniformly. In pulses. One lane spiked while another dropped, forcing quick adjustments. Karael felt the shift through his feet, knees bending reflexively as space compressed ahead of him.

  “Left,” Tomas called. “Now.”

  They pivoted.

  A half second late.

  The field punished them for it.

  Pressure slammed inward from the right, shoving the formation off balance. One of the rear venters stumbled, nearly falling. Malrec caught him by the collar and hauled him upright with a grunt.

  “Hold the line,” Tomas snapped. “Stop compensating.”

  Several cadets flinched at the tone. Tomas wasn’t raising his voice, but the authority in it wasn’t his to claim.

  Karael felt irritation flare.

  Compensating was the only reason they hadn’t fractured.

  He didn’t say it.

  Instead, he adjusted.

  Not outward. Inward.

  He pulled the pressure tighter around his core, compressing it just enough to stabilize his footing without bleeding into the space around him. The sensation was unpleasant, dense and grinding, but it worked.

  Pressure wanted direction. Without one it spilled outward. Karael forced it to obey geometry instead.

  The next pulse hit.

  This time, they absorbed it.

  “Again,” Jorrek called from the side.

  The field shifted.

  Hazards rose from the stone, low pylons that hummed with unstable pressure. Contact meant forced release. Reset.

  Tomas didn’t hesitate.

  “Through,” he said. “Straight line.”

  “That’s stupid,” Malrec growled.

  “It’s efficient,” Tomas replied. “Unless you’re planning to improvise again.”

  Malrec looked at Karael.

  Karael shook his head once. Not agreement. Warning.

  They went through.

  The first pylon detonated pressure sideways, clipping the formation. Karael felt the edge of it scrape along his ribs, pressure snarling, trying to escape. He held it down, teeth clenched.

  The second pylon misfired.

  Space buckled.

  Several cadets swore under their breath. Drills were supposed to punish mistakes, not rewrite the ground beneath them.

  Not enough to collapse. Enough to misalign.

  Karael felt it before he saw it. A lag between where the ground should be and where it was. His foot landed wrong.

  For a split second, the old instinct screamed.

  Release. Reset. Fix it.

  He didn’t.

  He pulled instead.

  The motion wasn’t visible. No flare. No surge. Just space obeying him slightly more than it should.

  Not fully. Not the way it had happened before.

  Just enough.

  The space ahead of him folded a fraction inward. Not a step. A slide. He was suddenly closer to the next marker than he should have been, shoulder brushing Seris’s as the formation jerked.

  “What the hell—” someone gasped.

  The field screamed.

  Alarms flared red along the pylons. Pressure surged violently, snapping back into place like an elastic band released too late.

  Karael staggered, chest burning, vision ringing. He forced his breathing steady, holding the compressed pressure in with brute focus.

  “Formation breach,” Kyne said calmly from the platform. “Reset.”

  The field went dead.

  The silence was worse than the noise.

  Reset fields always carried that moment. The system deciding who had failed before the instructors said it aloud.

  Malrec rounded on Tomas.

  “You saw that coming.”

  Tomas met his glare evenly.

  “I saw inefficiency.”

  “You engineered it,” Malrec snapped.

  “I tested it,” Tomas replied.

  His gaze flicked to Karael, brief and unreadable.

  “And I got my answer.”

  Jorrek’s whistle cut through them.

  “Enough.”

  Selka was already writing.

  Kyne leaned forward slightly.

  “Again,” he said.

  A few cadets groaned under their breath.

  Someone muttered, “We’re dead.”

  Karael straightened slowly.

  The pressure in his chest felt wrong. Too tight. Like it hadn’t forgiven him yet.

  Seris stepped closer, voice low.

  “You okay.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  It wasn’t a lie. Not yet.

  She studied him for a beat longer, then nodded.

  “Next time, warn us.”

  He almost smiled.

  Almost because smiling meant explaining.

  They reset.

  The field reactivated, pressure building once more. As they stepped forward, Karael felt a faint vibration at his wrist.

  The band pulsed.

  Once.

  Twice.

  A new symbol flared briefly across its surface, unfamiliar and gone before he could focus on it.

  He felt Tomas watching him.

  Not challenging.

  Not accusing.

  The look of someone verifying a hypothesis.

  The pressure surged again, harder this time.

  And whatever had been marked on his wrist did not fade.