The morning came with no fanfare, no warm light, no song of birds. Only the shrill blare of the sergeant's horn and the rumble of boots stomping through the cold, sucking mud.
The 75th Penal Battalion stirred like a hive of broken insects. Orders were barked with no patience; weapons — if they could be called that — were shoved into hands like scraps thrown to dogs. A disgusting slop of gruel was slapped into dented tin bowls, barely edible, but nobody complained. Not here. Not where survival was the only currency that mattered.
Caine moved with the others, forming a ragged line of bodies held together by little more than hunger and fear. Mud clung to his boots and pants, heavy as chains. His heart thudded against his ribs, not from exertion — from the knowledge of what today would bring.
Their mission was simple:
Test the enemy's defenses near the Northern Pass.
A death sentence.
Everyone knew it.
Around him, the soldiers shifted uneasily. Glances were cast his way now and then — wary, hollow-eyed. In another life, he might have missed these tiny betrayals of fear: the trembling fingers clutching weapons too tightly, the shallow, rapid breathing, the slight hitch in the sergeant's voice when he spoke of "glory."
But not anymore.
Since last night, Caine could *feel* them. Feel the terror, the sorrow, the desperation leaking out of their broken souls. His newly awakened Sixth Sense stretched around him like an invisible net, catching every tremor, every hidden emotion. It pressed against his mind, overwhelming at first, but now... he was learning to ride it like a wave. He couldn't escape it, nor did he want to. He was learning to embrace it.
A small, almost bitter smile tugged at his lips.
He shouldn't have been happy.
He had lost everything — his future at the Academy, his freedom.
But he had gained something more.
Power.
The one thing this cruel world respected.
He gripped the rusted sword they had thrown him — its blade chipped, its balance horrendous. It wasn't much. It barely qualified as a weapon. But in his hands, it was enough. Enough for now.
The horn blew again, sharper this time.
The command was clear.
*Charge.*
Caine swallowed dryly. Around him, the penal soldiers stumbled forward, a mad, chaotic rush toward the enemy lines hidden just beyond the rise of the hill. Mud sucked at his boots, dragging him down, but he forced his legs to move.
Fear gnawed at him — a living thing chewing at the edges of his mind. Every instinct screamed to turn, to run the other way.
But there was no turning back. Not here. Not now.
He ran until the moment the first volley of arrows blackened the sky. A thousand deaths falling like rain.
And then it happened.
His body moved before his mind could even form a thought.
Feet shifting. Muscles tensing. He threw himself aside a split second before a black-fletched arrow thudded into the mud where his chest would have been.
For a heartbeat, Caine stared.
It was real.
His ability wasn't some fever dream, some schizophrenic coping mechanism born from desperation.
He could *feel* danger before it struck.
Another arrow whistled through the air, aimed at his head.
Again, his body twisted away instinctively, the missile missing by a breath.
Adrenaline surged through him, hot and wild.
A grim laugh almost escaped his throat.
This was what awakening felt like.
They crested the hill together — a worn-out, desperate tide — and slammed into the enemy.
Larian soldiers awaited them: shields locked, spears braced, armored and ready. The moment the two sides collided, chaos erupted like a dam breaking.
Steel shrieked against steel.
Men screamed — some in anger, most in agony.
The air filled with the sharp, metallic tang of blood and the raw stench of fear.
Caine moved through it all like a phantom.
His Sixth Sense guided him with unnatural clarity, whispering where blades would fall, when a spear would thrust, when a shield bash would come swinging for his ribs.
A comrade to his left cried out — a spear punching clean through his gut. Blood sprayed in a hot arc towards Caine's face, but he barely flinched.
There was no time.
A Larian soldier was charging at him, spear aimed at his heart.
Before the weapon even lunged forward, Caine knew where it would strike. His body bent, twisted, ducking under the thrust with a smoothness he didn't know he possessed.
In the same motion, he rammed his rusted sword into the exposed armpit of the enemy's armor.
The sensation was sickening — the jarring *crunch* of metal against flesh and bone.
Hot blood gushed over his hand.
The Larian's eyes widened, mouth working soundlessly as he fell.
Caine staggered back, gasping, staring at the dying man.
For a moment, he could feel it — the man's sorrow, the crushing regret of unspoken words, of love never confessed.
It threatened to tear him apart.
It nearly made Caine cry on the spot.
But another enemy was already charging.
Caine gritted his teeth, forced the emotion down deep, and shifted aside just before a sword sliced through the space where his throat had been.
He retaliated instinctively, driving his sword low into the man's thigh.
The enemy crumpled, screaming.
Caine tore the enemy's weapon free — a freshly forged steel sword, miles better than the rusted junk he had been issued.
With one brutal stroke, he silenced the man, severing his head cleanly.
The kill made him realize he had no time to mourn or feel bad for the enemy. It was him or them.
The man's head rolled away in the mud, eyes still open in shock.
It should have horrified him like last death but
Maybe something broke inside.He had crossed a line, something deep within him shifting. He couldn't deny it any longer.
He was alive.
So terrifyingly, vividly alive.
Blood covered his being.
He barely noticed the taste of metal.
His heart pounded, his lungs burned, but he didn't stop.
Couldn't stop.
He found joy in the fighting.
Despite Everywhere around him, comrades falling —the screaming, gurgling, dying — Caine kept moving, kept killing, because to stop meant death. To stop was to stop feeling the power he felt The battle raged.
Penal soldiers were dying by the dozens, cut down like cattle against a wall of trained fighters. Caine was different though; he wove through the carnage, his body a blur of instinct and movement.
He wasn't a master swordsman.
Or anything special.
But he was at least a knight in training and knew how to handle himself.
He dodged a spear thrust aimed for his gut.
He ducked a sword swing that would have split his skull.
He slipped past a lunging enemy and slammed his stolen sword deep into the man's side.
Each kill came easier. Each heartbeat steadied.
There was no honor here. No chivalry. Only the brutal, desperate struggle to survive.
Blood soaked into the ground, turning the mud slick and crimson.
The metallic taste of it coated his tongue, mixed with the sharp, acrid stench of sweat and fear.
Caine fought with the single-minded clarity of a starving wolf.
Another enemy came at him, this one shouting a name — a brother, a friend, maybe a lover — but Caine couldn't afford to listen.
He parried the blow, felt the force behind it, read the next move even before it happened.
He countered with a brutal upward slash, catching the man beneath the chin. Blood sprayed in a fountain.
Still more came.
And still he fought.
Each kill was a new weight pressing onto his soul, but he shoved the guilt aside. He had no choice.
Survive or die.
That was the law of the battlefield.
Minutes blurred into an endless, grinding nightmare of violence.
He didn't know how many he killed.
He didn't care.
By the time the sergeant's voice roared out across the blood-soaked field — "RETREAT! FALL BACK!" — Caine was barely standing, his arms trembling, his lungs burning for air.
He turned and ran, stumbling with the other survivors back down the hill.
Behind them, the Larian soldiers didn't pursue.
There was no need.
They had made their point.
When they finally staggered back into the camp, filthy, bloodied, and broken, they were less than they had been that morning.
Thirty-six percent.
That was how many hadn't made it back.
The dead were left behind, rotting in the mud.
Yet when the commander — a grim-faced knight mounted on a heavy warhorse — addressed them, his voice was almost triumphant.
"We have won the 126th skirmish with the Kingdom of Laria."
He paused, letting that fact settle over the battered troops.
"As a reward for your service, one year shall be cut from each of your sentences."
For a moment, the camp was silent.
Then the survivors roared.
It wasn't hope.
Not really.
But it was something. A scrap. A chance to survive a little longer.
Caine stood among them, chest heaving, blood staining his stolen sword, feeling the strange rush of victory.
One year.
One fight down.
Nine more to go.
He smiled — a grim, determined smile — and wiped the blood from his blade.
This world had cast him out.
This world had tried to break him.
But he was still standing.
And with every heartbeat, with every breath, conviction to survive grew. After this battle, he knew what he wanted.
He would never be used as a plaything again.