"Bravo-Three, adjust heading. Enemy armor group closing from Grid Echo-Seven. Thirty seconds out."

  The voice isn’t real, but it still rings in my skull. Bright, sharp, like shrapnel too deep to dig loose.

  I stare down at the tome in my lap. The pages blur. My eyes skim words I don’t read. Across the room, the fire crackles in the hearth, low and steady. Its warmth beats back the last of winter’s chill, soft against the paneled walls of the estate’s great room. Polished wood and velvet drapes reinforce the stillness of late evening.

  My breath comes shallow. My fingers twitch, curling.

  And in my mind, I’m not here at all.

  I’m twelve again, locked in a steel coffin.

  "Copy."

  The word slips out of me before I realize it, muscle memory triggered by the phantom command dragging the answer from somewhere deep.

  I lean forward instinctively, tight, coiled, as if expecting impact. As if I could brace for it. Even though there’s nowhere to go.

  Even though that war ended lifetimes ago.

  The cockpit clamps in from every angle. Steel ribbing digs into my back. My knees are drawn tight to my chest, shoulders curled forward, sweat-slick hands already dancing across the controls. The damp padding around my helmet itches like hell, soaked in sweat and weeks-old grease. The mech shell creaks with every motion, a groaning animal too old to carry me, but still trying. I’ve been in here too long.

  I always am.

  "Bravo-Three, repeat last—are you adjusting heading?"

  "Heading locked. Powering shields. Arming rockets."

  My voice doesn’t shake.

  Not anymore.

  The machine’s core spins up beneath me, its hum climbing through the frame like a second heartbeat. Familiar. Steady. It grounds me even as it cages me.

  I don’t need the HUD to tell me where they’ll crest the ridge.

  I already know.

  War has a rhythm. You learn it—or you die out of sync.

  "Unit status: Bravo-One KIA. Bravo-Two is mobile and falling back, legs are shredded. You're the last full mech up."

  Of course I am.

  We were four when they took us in, a line of shivering kids stripped down, shaved, sprayed, tagged like livestock. We didn’t have names then. Just charts. Scores. Aptitude. Reflex latency. Pattern cognition. Intelligence scoring. Proprioception mapping. Emotional tolerance under duress. They measured how fast we cried when the lights vanished. How long we held our breath underwater. How fast we could solve puzzles while sleep deprived. Whether we flinched when the screaming started.

  Thirty kids in my intake. Twenty-two made it past assessment. Only nine made it through training, the rest either washed out or vanished between courses.

  They started calling us “seeds” then. Not cadets. Not soldiers. Seeds.

  Because that’s all we were to them—something small and cheap, meant to be buried. If we bloomed, good. If we broke, we would die in dirt and silence.

  The normal schedule was by age six, running combat sims. By seven, the hopefuls were wired into the simulators with blackout visors and heartbeat limiters. By eight, live fire training.

  I was six when they shoved me into my first shell. Seven when I got my first confirmed kill. Eight when I stopped vomiting after. Nine when I realized that wasn’t normal.

  " Bravo-Three, you're our eyes now. Drone recon's toast. Anything breaks through, you're the only one with a line of sight."

  "Understood."

  Five red dots bloom on my HUD. Five mechs. One medium class, four lights, moving in staggered formation. That means a tactician’s with them—not just another rush squad.

  Fine.

  I slide the throttle forward with my heel and angle the mech to half-cover behind the outcrop. Rusted plates scrape against stone, joints groaning in protest. This frame’s older than I am. The servos wheeze. My knees cramp from the shift. The seat’s too tight. My elbows knock the side brackets every time I reach for the throttle.

  I’m outgrowing it.

  They’ll notice soon.

  That’s what happens to kids like me. You get too long in the limbs, too slow to contort in tight turns, too stiff to reroute the manual servos in zero-grav, and they "reassign" you.

  Not to another mech. There’s no bigger shells waiting. You don’t graduate. You just don’t fit anymore.

  That’s when they “retire” you. Quietly. Permanently.

  "Target in sight," I mutter.

  The lights crest the ridge in a leap-formation—three break left, one hovers for overwatch. The medium lags a beat, then pushes center with a full-body shield flare.

  It’s a good formation.

  I fire a scatter blast at the overwatch before it can relay visuals. The sky lights up in gold as its thruster core ruptures mid-hover. Wreckage rains down behind the ridge.

  Three seconds.

  I drop low behind cover, launch a pressure mine from the shoulder rig to anticipate their fallback. Pivot out of cover and lay a suppressive burst down the left flank, forcing them to move back into the mine. The whole ridge goes up in smoke.

  "Hit confirmed. They're backing off the left."

  "Focus fire, Bravo-Three. Don’t let them regroup."

  "I’m not."

  Two seconds.

  I am twelve now. None of my intake group made it past nine.

  This is my thirty-seventh sortie.

  The average pilot lasts twelve. Fourteen if they’re lucky. Most don’t make it past their first five. The instructors say it’s not about luck. That it's mindset. Nerve. Obedience. But I’ve seen kids with steady hands and fast reflexes torn apart in seconds. I've seen luck. And I’ve seen what happens when it runs out. It's not because I'm brave. It’s because I plan better than the monsters who made this place.

  There’s a tally scratched into the inside of my boot.

  Not kills. Not enemy units.

  Just marks—one for each squadmate who didn’t come back.

  I don’t carve names. I never knew most of them well enough. Some were too young to speak in full sentences. Others didn’t last long enough to deserve anything more than a single line.

  So I give them shapes. Slashes. Circles. A symbol for each one. A scar to hold their place.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The boy who always hummed before launch. The girl with the mismatched gloves. The twin who wouldn’t fight unless his brother went first. The youngest—six years old—who called me “big brother” once before his voice cut off mid-scream.

  One hundred and twenty-eight marks.

  Etched with a blade edge. Remembered in silence.

  I whisper them sometimes, just before sleep—what I remember of them. Not their names, but the pieces that made them real. A roll call of ghosts.

  I need to add one more, later.

  Once they pry me out.

  Once they hose down the shell.

  Because if I don’t mark them, they vanish.

  And if I forget them, they die again.

  The far right flank mech jumps early—panic. I catch it with a wrist-mounted railshot. The body cartwheels into the slope. My mech groans from the recoil. Something sparks under my seat. I smell ozone and hot copper.

  One second.

  Two left.

  The medium drops its shield and charges. Full bore. Chest beam hot.

  "He’s coming straight for me," I say.

  "Fall back to Delta—"

  "Negative."

  I let the charge get close.

  Close enough that I can see the heat distortion around its intake vents. Close enough that I can smell my own fear inside this cramped, stinking cage.

  Then I force the control yoke hard left, scrape the mech into a slide, and jam my knee against the emergency latch, and eject the right arm core.

  The whole right arm ejects—core and all—directly into the charging mech’s faceplate.

  White flash.

  HUD dead.

  Ears ringing.

  Zero seconds.

  When the world reboots, all I see is smoke.

  The ridge is empty. No more red dots. Just ash. Smoke curls where the medium went down. The last light-class fled.

  "Bravo-Three—Nick—confirm status."

  My name. They use it now. Because I keep surviving.

  "Alive," I choke out.

  "Say again?"

  I drag in a breath. Air smoke-slick and blood-warm. “Alive. Mech compromised. Right arm’s gone. Left leg seized.”

  A pause. Then, softer: "Copy. Stay in place. Retrieval en route. Standby."

  Blood fills the back of my throat, hot and metallic. Smoke stings my eyes. Oil on my palms, slick like fresh blood. Heat curling up my spine like a ghost. The frame groans beneath me.

  I sag into the seat, breathing shallow. Listening to the ticking of stressed metal. Counting seconds because they still pass.

  I don’t know who we’re fighting. No one ever told us. The briefings are just maps. Gridlines. Targets. Red dots on a HUD that blink out when we do our job. No flags. No insignia. No names. Just ‘hostiles’ on a screen, like we're not fighting people, just algorithms.

  New planets. New moons. New bunkers.

  Drop. Fight. Repeat.

  They ship us in crates and call it deployment. I know the inside of drop cages better than I know the sky.

  I’m twelve. Barely.

  At least on the outside.

  Inside?

  Inside, I’m older than cities. Older than names. Older than myths. Lifetimes churn behind my eyes, each one layered over the last like ash on stone.

  Fought under suns that burned black. Hid in jungles that sang when you bled. Drowned in oceans made of light. Swam through mana like it was air.

  Bled for worlds that didn’t even have names.

  I plan.

  I adapt.

  I survive.

  Even here, in a world nearly barren of it, I can still feel mana—the thinnest thread of it, brittle and fraying, buried deep beneath steel and circuitry. Not like the worlds before. Not like the ones where it ran thick as blood, where a breath could bend gravity, where a whispered word could shift the sky.

  But still, it’s here.

  And still, I gather it.

  Grain by grain, I hoard it behind my ribs like smuggled fire. Pressed into marrow and memory. Just enough to cheat death. Just enough to tip fate.

  To tilt a missile one breath to the left.

  To shift weight an inch before impact.

  To survive where others didn’t.

  But I’m running out.

  Not of magic—of time.

  The shell no longer fits. My limbs ache from cramped hours. The controls crowd my thighs. Every adjustment bruises bone. Growth is betrayal. My body, once an asset, now marks me for disposal.

  They’ll see it in the data. They always do.

  Then comes reassignment.

  Retirement.

  Disposal.

  Let them try.

  I’ve been saving my strength. Hiding it. Building a fire they don’t see.

  Not just to escape.

  To end it.

  Because this war, this world—where children are mined like ore and burned like batteries—deserves to end screaming.

  And I will be the one to light the fuse.

  …

  The embers in the hearth pulse low, their light soft and sullen.

  Not the roaring heat of a reactor core about to breach.

  Not the snarling red-and-black of a structure fire, chewing through steel and bone.

  Just a fading warmth, flickering and faint, barely clinging to life.

  The fire has slumped into coals, casting long shadows across the estate’s great room—shadows that stretch like fingers too tired to reach.

  The tome in my lap lies open, forgotten.

  The words blur, a smear of ink and old parchment beneath eyes that haven’t really seen the page in hours. My breath drags across cracked lips—slow, shallow.

  The silence has weight.

  And I’m not alone.

  Isla stands beside me, closer than she ever allows herself to be.

  One hand rests lightly on the back of the chair. The other hangs at her side, half-curled—like she doesn’t know whether to reach for me, to shake me, or just to prove I’m still here.

  Her stance is wary, protective in a way that doesn’t come from protocol.

  Her eyes search my face. Focused. Gentle.

  Not like a soldier looking for threat—

  Like someone watching a friend drift too far out into dark water.

  “How far did you go this time?”

  Her voice is low. Careful. I've never heard her use that tone before—soft, but edged with something like grief.

  “I never left.”

  It’s true, in the only way I can make it be. She doesn’t know about the past lives. She never will. But she knows enough to see what shouldn’t be in a seven-year-old’s eyes.

  I feel the unspoken part of her question hang there.

  But did you make it back?

  I nod. Just once.

  Her shoulders ease—barely. A breath she didn’t know she was holding slips out. She leans back half a step, regaining her balance.

  “My lord,” she says, voice dry now, returning to familiar ground, “woolgathering this late will not help you come morning.”

  It’s a jab, of sorts. A gentle one. And I welcome it.

  It gives me something to push against. A reason to remember how to move again. How to be here again.

  How to let go of steel and smoke and ash, if only for a while.

  I lift my chin with mock haughtiness. “It is the sworn duty of a young lord’s attendants to ensure he is properly tucked into bed—even if they must carry him there.”

  A flicker of surprise breaks across her face. Then a grin. Sharp, bright, real.

  I slip from the chair like liquid—just before her arms close around the empty space where I’d been sitting—and bolt for the door.

  She shouts after me, but I’m already laughing, feet pattering on polished wood.

  Bed sounds good.

  The corridor yawns out ahead of me, dimly lit by amber sconces and moonlight spilling through the high, arched windows. My feet slap softly on the polished stone as I run, half-laughing, half-gasping, the sudden motion still strange after so much stillness. For a moment, wind cuts through me, clean and sharp and empty of memory. It almost feels like flying.

  Behind me, Isla’s footsteps are almost silent. Almost.

  She gives me a two-second head start, maybe three. A grace she doesn’t have to offer.

  I round the corner into the north wing, bare feet skidding slightly on the rug, and nearly collide with a member of the night watch posted by the stairwell. Sergeant Kellen, one of the older guards, broad-shouldered, beard gone mostly silver, just raises an eyebrow as I roll to the side to avoid the collision, then flash past.

  He sighs through his nose, not unkind. “Evening sprint, my lord?” he calls after me.

  Before I can answer, Isla appears at my shoulder without warning. Not breathless. Not even winded. Just there. One hand clamps gently but firmly around the back of my collar, halting me instantly.

  “I told you,” she says dryly, to the guard, “if he takes off running after sunset, wait ten seconds, and I’ll be right behind.”

  Kellen chuckles, the sound low and easy. “Thought it was bedtime.”

  “I was trying,” I mutter as she turns me down one of the corridors. “Hearts change.”

  “Feet too,” Isla says, guiding me with practiced ease, waving back at Kellen as he resumes his duty.

  We walk in silence for a bit. My pulse slows. The energy drains off like the last trickle from a cracked canteen. I don’t resist her grip, though she lets go the moment she feels me steady.

  I glance up at her as we near the bend toward my room.

  “You didn’t have to catch me so fast.”

  “You didn’t really want to run.”

  She says it softly, without judgment.

  We both know she’s right.

  I let my eyes drift back to the floor as the quiet thickens again. The warmth in my chest, the laughter, the sprint, flickers. And then it falters.

  Because I can still feel it. Beneath everything. The rage.

  It swells again, sharp and hot and bitter. Not at her. Not at this place. But at the memory. At the pattern.

  At the war behind me—and the one ahead.

  They used children there. Left us in cages and called us seeds. We were tools, not people. Most never even made it to double digits.

  But at least, in that world, they used their own.

  Here… here it may be worse.

  What Alistair showed me, it hints that they steal them. Rip children from their own lives. From their homes, their families, their futures. Pluck them from other worlds, other times. From places where they may be wanted. Where they may be loved.

  Whoever does this lies to themselves. They call it summoning. They drape it in glory, in banners, in words like “chosen” and “hero.”

  And then they hand children a sword.

  Or a title.

  Or a purpose they never asked for.

  And feed them to a war they had no part in starting.

  I know war. I know sometimes it's necessary. I know sometimes it’s the only thing that stands between a people and the fire. But this—this isn’t necessity.

  It’s a system.

  And it is heinous.

  I imagine one pulled from their mother’s arms while scattering feed to chickens in a field. Another vanishing from a classroom, mid-sentence. A third from a hospital bed, still smiling faintly at the nurse. And the last—from a sealed family hab, high above some blue-lit planet, the station lights flickering as the airlock hisses closed.

  I feel my nails digging into my palm.

  It takes everything I have not to scream.

  “Breathe,” Isla says quietly.

  She doesn’t look at me, but she sees more than most ever will.

  I exhale slowly, steadying the pace. Letting the fire die down just enough not to burn the walls around me.

  “You know,” she murmurs after a moment, “for someone who holds themselves with such poise, you run like a feral cat.”

  I blink, surprised. Then snort softly. “And you stalk like one.”

  She grins. “That’s why I always catch you.”

  We turn the final corner toward my chambers. The doors are open, the bedding already turned down.

  I stop just short of the threshold. My fingers brush the doorway. The anger hasn’t gone. It won’t. But I know how to carry it without letting it spill.

  Not yet. Not here.