Nate had barely slept, and the miserable mattress had nothing to do with it.
Whenever he drifted off, something dragged him back to the relay. Milo against the wall. The technician’s arm around his throat. The man in the inspection pit reaching for his knife.
By morning, the recovery specialist’s Skill had taken most of the swelling from Nate’s ribs. He could breathe normally again if he did not fill his lungs too quickly. His wrist remained wrapped, his knee felt stiff, and the bruises around his throat had darkened enough to show above his collar.
Walking was manageable as long as he kept his steps short.
The grey band around his wrist still marked him as injured and under review.
A transport left the recovery station shortly after sunrise. Eleven other delayed candidates travelled with him. Most were from the protected section of the train. Iris was the exception. A few had bandaged arms or shallow cuts across their faces. One spent half the journey complaining that his luggage had disappeared during the evacuation.
Two others compared the stories they had heard about the attack.
Professor Dacre had destroyed an entire assault team.
The mercenaries had brought a Fortress-class weapon.
One of the Legacy candidates had stopped a train car from overturning.
Nobody mentioned Coach Eleven.
Nate watched the city through the window.
The eastern districts gave way to freight yards, reinforced roads and long stretches of cleared ground. Royal Field Academy stood beyond another defensive wall.
Its central buildings looked familiar. Nate had seen them in admission material for two years: old stone halls, narrow towers and glass walkways built between them. The royal emblem hung above the administration building.
The photographs had ignored everything around them.
Rail lines crossed the southern grounds and ended beside enormous warehouses. Workshops occupied entire blocks. Concrete barriers separated firing grounds from medical facilities and stretches of artificial ruins.
Cadets were already outside.
One team carried a stretcher through heavy smoke while an instructor changed the marked route ahead of them. Farther away, candidates with brown shoulder strips dragged a supply platform through a flooded trench. A technical group worked around an open engine while water poured over them from overhead pipes.
Whatever their field, nobody looked comfortable.
The transport stopped outside the eastern reception building.
A woman at the entrance scanned Nate’s wrist.
"You missed general intake."
"I was at the recovery station."
Her eyes moved over the restrictions attached to his file.
"Registration terminals are inside. Recover your schedule and report to your morning block."
Nate entered a wide hall lined with standing screens. He found an empty one and held his wrist beneath the scanner.
His admission record appeared.
NATE CALDER
COHORT TWENTY-SEVEN
COMBAT DOMAIN
MORNING BLOCK: COMBAT FOUR
COMMON THEORY: HALL SIX
His operational section remained unassigned.
Two notices sat beneath the schedule. The first carried his medical restriction. The second linked to the continuing investigation into the train attack.
Nate opened the campus map.
Cohort Twenty-Seven was his promotion. Everyone admitted from the latest awakening cycle belonged to it, regardless of Class or future profession.
Their mornings were divided by domain. Combat candidates trained separately from medics, technicians, scouts and logistics students. After midday, they returned to common theory for circulation, Circuit advancement, Load Classes, dangerous species and basic field treatment.
A message appeared at the bottom of the screen.
MORNING BLOCKS BEGIN IN THIRTEEN MINUTES.
A route lit up toward the western grounds.
Nate closed the file and followed it.
Combat Four had gathered on a field surrounded by reinforced barriers.
Almost eighty first-year candidates waited in loose rows while instructors checked names and equipment. Some wore expensive personal boots or Conductive training pieces. Most had changed into plain academy clothes.
Nate recognized Mara near the front.
Ethan stood several places away from her, speaking to a broad-shouldered candidate Nate had never seen. Two security officers waited beside the barrier, far enough away to pretend they were watching the entire group.
Nate joined the registration line.
Ethan noticed him.
He stopped speaking and stepped out of formation.
"You made it."
"Yeah."
Ethan’s eyes moved over the strips on Nate’s cheek, the wrapped wrist and the grey band.
"What happened?"
A warning horn sounded.
"Ward," an instructor called. "Back in position."
Nate nodded toward the field.
"Go. I’ll tell you later."
Ethan hesitated, then returned to his row.
Nate reached the registration table and held out his wrist.
The instructor scanned it.
"Medical restriction."
"I was cleared to leave the station."
"For transport."
"I can do the parts without circulation."
The instructor opened Nate’s medical file. His eyes paused on the treatment record and then moved to the injuries listed beneath it.
"This morning establishes your baseline. Endurance, balance, recovery and circulation response. Testing you now gives us numbers we can’t use."
"I’m already behind."
"You missed one morning."
"So did everyone on that transport."
"They weren’t all hit by a train."
The instructor spoke without amusement. He had already made his decision.
Nate looked past him.
The first rows moved onto the track. Ethan joined them while academy staff recorded their starting pace.
"My knee works."
"Report to academic registration. You return after medical clearance."
The instructor closed Nate’s file and called the next candidate forward.
Nate left before the gates shut.
Academic registration occupied the ground floor of the central library.
A clerk collected Nate’s temporary documents and completed the parts of intake he had missed. She confirmed Cohort Twenty-Seven, Combat Four, and Hall Six before reaching his operational assignment.
"That remains pending."
"Because of the review?"
"And the medical restriction."
She turned the screen toward him.
Combat Four handled his training as a fighter. His operational section would be smaller and mixed, combining different domains for simulations and later field rotations.
His medical status blocked practical assessment.
The review blocked the section assignment itself.
"When does it end?"
"The investigation team hasn’t entered a date."
"Holt can confirm what happened."
"When Marshal Holt can provide a statement, they’ll contact her."
Nate looked at the line beside Holt’s name.
No condition had been released.
"What happens until then?"
"You attend theory. Once medical clears you, you return to Combat Four."
"And the section?"
"You wait."
The clerk issued him an academy access card.
"Sections begin preliminary work next week. The library and general theory facilities are open to you. Your band will reject access to the training grounds until a physician removes the restriction."
"When does Hall Six begin?"
"One."
It was not yet nine.
The clerk returned to her terminal.
Nate could have walked back west and watched Combat Four through the barrier. Ethan would be running while Nate stood outside with a medical band around his wrist.
He turned toward the library stairs.
The first floor held current manuals and course material. Older cadets worked at long tables without paying much attention to the new arrivals.
Nate climbed to the second floor.
Military histories occupied one side. Archived Class records and old field reports filled the other. Most original documents had been moved into protected storage, leaving reading terminals between shelves of approved copies.
He chose an empty station.
The first Echo had kept him alive during the attack. It had changed how he placed his weight, helped him cross unstable ground, and reduced the energy he wasted whenever fear tightened his body.
He still did not understand why Rovan had begun with movement.
Nate entered the name.
ROVAN HEST
Hundreds of results appeared.
The public records told the story he already knew.
The Last Hunter. The Grey Expeditions. The man who had tracked a wounded Fortress-class creature across three provinces after every other hunting team abandoned the pursuit.
School texts described Rovan as an instinctive genius who left formal instruction behind because conventional methods could not keep pace with him. Several academy courses still taught principles taken from his later expeditions.
There were statues of him in three northern cities.
Nate restricted the search to Royal Field Academy records.
Seven files remained.
The oldest contained an admission photograph.
Rovan looked younger than Nate expected. His hair had been cut close, and the scar across his jaw was absent. He looked tired and irritated by the camera.
The file identified him as a reconnaissance candidate with an unlisted Variant Class.
He had entered the academy Unlinked.
Nate opened the first-year reports.
Rovan’s observation scores had been exceptional. His attendance had not. He skipped supervised recovery periods and continued training after instructors ordered him to stop.
The medical records began during his second month.
Inflammation around the ankles and knees. Energy accumulation at the hip. Temporary numbness in his left foot.
Nate leaned closer.
Those were the same areas Rovan had forced him to control during the first Echo.
An instructor had attached a note after Rovan’s third medical visit.
Cadet Hest continues introducing energy during mobility exercises. He has been ordered to separate physical conditioning from circulation practice until his pathways can support sustained use.
The next report contained Rovan’s explanation.
Hest claims movement can shape a continuous circulation route if energy follows the body instead of being driven through it.
Nate read the sentence again.
During the Echo, Rovan had corrected every break in his balance. Whenever Nate forced the motion, energy struck an ankle or knee and gathered there. When his movement flowed properly, the energy passed with it.
The exercise had improved the way he moved, but that had never been its only purpose.
The next medical file described a more serious incident.
Rovan had attempted to circulate energy through his entire body before opening a second Node. The energy reached his shoulder, failed to return to the Core and accumulated until a medic intervened.
Academy doctrine taught cadets to condition their pathways, increase their reserves and open the second Node before completing the return route.
Rovan wanted the route prepared first.
Another instructor recorded his reasoning.
Hest believes the First Circuit could close immediately upon integration of the second Skill if a stable return path already existed.
The academy suspended his circulation training.
Rovan resumed it the following night.
The remaining reports grew shorter. Fresh damage appeared farther along the same route. A sealed exercise zone. Another medical intervention. A warning that the next attempt might permanently damage his pathways.
Then came the disciplinary decision.
FIRST-YEAR STATUS: TERMINATED
Nate checked the name at the top of the file.
Royal Field Academy used Rovan’s methods in its reconnaissance curriculum. The kingdom remembered him as one of its greatest heroes.
He had been expelled before completing his first year.
Nate returned to the final medical scan.
A marked route began in the lower body and passed through every area trained during the Echo. It rose through the hips and torso before ending close to the Core.
A note beneath the image stopped midway through its final sentence.
Cadet demonstrated partial construction of an unauthorized return path. Further attempts are likely to result in permanent—
Nate studied the marked route again.
Rovan had already shown him the beginning.
He had simply never shown Nate where it led.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter