Days Gone By Chapter 15

…it is in the surrender of the soul that the truth of men’s nature becomes clear. When we let go of our morality in favor of practicality, the unthinkable becomes easy, and the moral impossible. I don’;t know if what we did marked the beginning of the escalation, or just it’s justification after the fact, but the truth of it all is that in the end it didn’t matter. We did what we believed was just, even as we decried the same actions taken by the enemy. We were good, and right, and just, and they were evil, depraved and wicked, and on that line in the sand we built our gallows.

-Chapter 4, The Tip of the Spear, Days Gone By: A Memoir of the Gallian Front

Chapter 15

The Kloden Forest rose like a living rampart of endless green, a vast and ancient wildland untouched by the shaping hands of men. It swallowed the southeastern edge of Gallia with its sheer immensity, the trees rising like pillars of some forgotten cathedral. Their trunks were immense, many as wide as the chassis of a truck, their bark ridged and furrowed from centuries of storms and seasons. High above, their crowns fused into a dense, interlocking canopy that turned the rising sun into a muted, coppery haze drifting through layers of leaves.

Between those giants, the underbrush surged in thick, tangled sweeps that choked the ground. Ferns grew shoulder high, thornbushes crawled around the roots in snarled webs, and old fallen trees lay half consumed by moss, fungi, and creeping vines. The land itself dipped and heaved beneath the forest, carved by ancient rivers into deep-cut ravines whose slopes vanished into shadow. Some opened into narrow, jagged gullies, others into cavernous valleys where the light never fully reached.

Mist wrapped the forest in slow-moving sheets, hanging between the trunks like pale smoke. It drifted through the branches in lazy coils, carrying the smell of damp soil, wet bark, and the sharp tang of cedar sap. Every breath tasted of earth and age, as if the forest exhaled around them with a weight older than any map that dared to name it.

Squad Seven occupied a patchwork of clearings scattered among the massive trunks. Several other militia units had pitched their tents nearby, forming loose clusters of canvas and rope, while fires crackled in the early hours to stave off the chill left by the night. At the far edge of the largest clearing sat the Lion's Den, a modest arrangement of four tents and a stretched tarp that served as shelter for the Pride. Even in the half-light, the camp showed the quiet touch of people who had been living rough for days. Bedrolls lay mostly straight but softened by use, creased where someone had slept curled against the still-cold nights. Crates were stacked in tidy rows, though a few lids were left ajar from hurried hands digging for supplies before dawn. The fire pit held the faint smudge of last night’s ash, brushed aside by a passing boot rather than fully cleared, the kind of small, lived‑in mess that came from a squad trying to keep some order while living out of the woods.

Jerry crouched beside the fire, feeding twigs into the growing flame. A tin pot of water balanced on the stones, already beginning to steam as he stirred in powdered coffee with the back of a spoon. He moved slowly, shoulders stiff with the weight of too little sleep and too many long days pushing through the woods. The heat was already seeping into the air despite the hour, and humidity clung to his skin before the fire’s warmth even reached him.

Behind him, Juno strode through the tents with the sharp, practiced edge of someone who had spent years dragging exhausted soldiers out of their bedrolls. She snapped open flaps hard enough to rattle the canvas, kicked at boots with quick, irritated taps, and tore blankets away before anyone could pretend they had not heard her. Jane, stubborn as ever, burrowed deeper into her bedding and spat a string of curses that made Marina groan in her sleep.

Juno gave her exactly three chances. On the fourth, she hooked her fingers under the corner of Jane’s sleeping mat and flipped it in a single, brutal yank. Jane hit the dirt with a bark of outrage, scrambling upright, hair a mess, eyes full of murder as she glared up at Juno.

"Did you have to, you heavy‑handed bitch?" Jane snarled, her voice raw with exhaustion.

"Yes." Juno said without slowing, as if flipping Jane onto the ground was just another part of her morning routine.

The argument died quickly as Marina jolted awake in the adjacent tent. She sat up with a scowl, hair tousled and eyes half-lidded with irritation. “Do both of you have to be this loud?” she muttered, her voice sharp with the edge of someone who had never been a morning person.

Wendy, already sitting cross-legged with her boots half-laced, sniffed the air and perked up immediately. “Is that coffee, Boss?” she asked, her tone bright.

“Not yet,” Jerry said. “But close enough.”

A week had crawled by since Squad Seven first set foot in the Kloden Forest, and each passing day had found a new way to grind them down. The rain came in sheets or drizzle, but always came, and it turned the forest floor into a mire that sucked at boots and left everything damp. Even on dry days, the soaked earth squelched underfoot. The canopy, so dense and intertwined, locked in the moisture, smothering them in a heavy, sour humidity that clung to skin and gear alike.

Fighting in the Kloden woods had settled into a miserable pattern of ambushes and withdrawals. The Imperials moved light and fast, never holding ground for long. Patrols came and went at odd hours, rarely using the same route twice. They laid false trails, broke up their squads into fireteams, and scattered them across overlapping paths.

Every brush with the enemy ended in a flash of contact, a spray of gunfire, a barked order, then the forest swallowed them again. There were no set lines, no firm fronts, just a constant drag through mud and trees and a creeping sense that they were being pulled deeper into a fight the Imps had already mapped out.

Nobody in the militia had managed to track down the Imperial supply base, but it was obvious one existed. The frequency of patrols, the pace of their reinforcement, and the scattered caches they found told the story well enough. The enemy had a foothold out there, tucked somewhere deep in the woods, and it was keeping the pressure steady on the Gallian lines. The only question was when they’d find it, or if the Imps meant for them to walk right into it.

Jerry had been driving the Pride hard, digging deep into tactics most Gallians pretended didn’t exist. He’d broken open the insurgent’s playbook to do it. Things had been tame so far, but he’d been considering some more extreme options. The fighting had started tame, but that wasn’t going to last. Not with the way the Imps were acting. They’d begun shelling indiscriminately, pounding any sector they thought might hide Gallians. It didn’t matter if it was scouts or engineers, infantry or recon, if they thought they saw movement, they opened up with mortars and spotter fire without hesitation. Worse, Imperial light tanks had started creeping through the northern edge of the woods. Not in formation. Not even in force. Just a few at a time, sliding through the ravines, using a mix of autoguns and flamethrowers to root out anything that moved.

So Jerry started hitting back the only way that worked. Their work had gotten nasty. They crawled through the muck to lay tripwires, rigged charges on game trails, set false signals, marked kill zones, and fell on enemy scouts with fast, brutal strikes before disappearing back into the brush. The squad was running low, both on gear and on energy, but there hadn’t been any other choice. The Imps were pushing hard, and the only way to keep the pressure off the rest of Squad Seven was to push back harder.

And the bastards were adapting. Every time they thought they had a fix on the Pride or the rest of the forward units, they blanketed the trees with indirect fire. Airburst shells tore branches to splinters and turned thickets into mulch. The north was firmly in Imperial hands, and they weren’t content to stay defensive. It had become a knife-fight in slow motion, each side circling the other, trying to find the one opening that would end the campaign decisively.

Behind them, rumors drifted through camp of the mess unfolding in Aslone. Captain Varrot and General Damon were stuck in a political tug-of-war while trying to hold the line against the War Witch, who had carved a bloody swath across the central front. The fighting there had turned into a stalemate, the kind where territory shifted by inches and corpses piled by the dozen. In the middle of it, the brass couldn't decide how to respond, each trying to pull units in different directions. It had kept them from pressing their advantage after Jaeger’s defeat.

At the same time, the Imperials had shifted their weight west, dragging attention and resources away from the central theater. Nobody knew why, not Damon, not Varrot, and certainly not Jerry. Maybe it was a feint, maybe it wasn’t. But whatever their goal, it had given the Kloden defenders just enough breathing room to regroup and reinforce. Command believed that the remnants of Jaeger’s force were trying to fall back into the main line through the forest, and if they succeeded, it would undo everything Gallia had gained since Vasel and quagmire the war effort.

So that was the job. Find the bastards. Bleed them. Break their legs before they could reinforce the central line. If Jaeger's remnants managed to firm up the northern line, the entire campaign would collapse inward. The militia was spread thin, barely holding the line, and a proper Imperial push would drive straight through their center like a knife through the guts of the nation. But that was a concern above him, for now.

This morning, though, he had a meeting with Welkin in the command tent, followed by another three-day push into contested territory. He poured the first cup of coffee, handed it to Juno, and rubbed the heel of his hand over his eyes before standing.

“Make sure everyone’s up,” he said quietly.

“They’re up,” Marina grumbled.

Wendy grinned. “Up and hungry.”

Jerry nodded. “Good. Get some food, then get ready. We've got another long hike tonight.”

000

The command tent sat at the center of the forward camp, its canvas walls held taut by thick ropes sunk deep into the damp forest soil. Morning light pressed faintly through the fabric, softening the harsh outlines of the ragnite lamps burning inside. The air was warm and close, thick with the mingled scents of ink, burnt ragnite, and damp paper. Field notes, maps, and half‑sorted reports covered every available surface, stacked in precarious towers or spread open across makeshift tables assembled from ammunition crates.

Welkin stood over one of those tables, jacket discarded and sleeves rolled up in the growing spring heat. His hair stuck slightly to his forehead, and he leaned forward with a focused tension that had become familiar over the past week. Rosie and Largo hovered nearby, both of them looking over reports with grim faces. Alicia stood at a small side table, pouring her third cup of coffee of the morning, judging by the two empty cups beside her.

Nobody looked particularly pleased by what they were reading.

Jerry slipped into the tent, boots soft on the packed earth, but none of the four turned immediately. They threw him only brief glances, absorbed in the growing mess of bad news spread across the maps.

“So what’s the word?” he asked, stepping toward the table.

Welkin pushed a marked‑up map across the makeshift desk. Red pencil scars crossed the drawn ridgelines and ravines, mingled with black designations and scrawled notes in Alicia’s tight handwriting.

“Things seem to be stabilizing across the front,” Welkin began, and the others drifted closer. “The Imperials are dug in across Aslone, and word has it that they’re going to be pulling Squads Six and Nine from Kloden to reinforce Damon’s push.”

Rosie made a face but said nothing.

“They want us to make sure the Imperial remnants from Jaeger’s army don’t move up to support the central line,” Welkin continued. “So they want us to tangle them up in the woodline.”

Largo frowned, leaning in to tap a section of the map. “Lieutenant, it’s going to be a real slog, especially across the Vardo Ridgeline here.” His finger traced a jagged mess of terrain lines. “That place is a mess of collapses and caves, always was. I was there in EW1, and I still remember rat‑holing Imps out of that tangle.”

The words made Welkin pause, understanding the weight behind them. Two platoons of Imperials had hidden in those caves during EW1 to escape combined Europan and Gallian artillery. They had been a problem until someone forced a dozen canisters of Ragnide gas into the tunnels and smoked them out. What came back out of those caves was not a victory anyone wanted to remember. Ragnide gas blistered skin on contact, burned out lungs, and left men coughing up blood and shreds of their own throats as they crawled into the open. Some stumbled out blind, eyes melted to gray paste, screaming until their voices failed. Others never made it far enough to scream, their bodies slumped against the cave mouths like discarded sacks, blue‑tinged foam still leaking from their lips. The wind carried the stench for days, and the soldiers assigned to clear the bodies wore masks that did nothing to block the smell or the sight. Nobody had liked how that ended, and nobody ever forgot it.

“Then what do you suggest?” Welkin asked.

Largo pointed farther north. “If we catch them here, we shut the door on the caves entirely. That forces them into open forest, where they can’t dig in, and they can’t fall back into those tunnels. The ground in this stretch is too uneven for them to get their heavy tanks through, and the light ones will have trouble with the deadfall and gullies. If we move fast and hit them hard, we can box them in between the ridgeline and the ravine runoffs. They’ll have nowhere to maneuver, nowhere to bring up reinforcements, and no fallback position once we press them. Cut them off here, and we can break their whole northern line before they even realize what we’re doing.”

Welkin frowned. “The problem is that this is in range of their bombard mortars. We still don’t know where the fire is coming from, and the Imps have been difficult to pin down.” He sighed before turning to Alicia. “Any word on that?”

“My scouts have been mapping the area, but we’ve been getting pushback around Hill 33,” she answered. “There aren’t any good crossings besides that. I know there were rope bridges and bush paths decades ago, but we haven’t found any. The maps we’ve got are old.” She glanced at Jerry. “Have you or the others had any more luck?”

“Unfortunately not,” Jerry said. “I’ve been looking at doing a climb-over at Torren’s Fall, see if I can get something set up there, but the Imps have been persistent. I think they’re a little upset that I killed Radi. Hard to tell though. Every time they spot me, they start gunning for me like I owe them money.”

A few sharper laughs rolled through the tent, but it faded quickly, as Jerry moved over to the map.

“We’ve been trying to discourage them from sending patrols out,” Jerry added, “but it’s a slow process.”

“Do I even want to know what you mean by ‘discourage,’ Jerry?” Welkin asked, his voice tight with fatigue and something sharper beneath it.

Jerry shook his head.

“I didn’t think so,” Welkin muttered, the strain cracking through his tone. “Every time we try to push the line, something new blows up in our faces.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, exhaling hard before forcing himself back into the role. “Rosie, where are we on securing our back lines?”

The conversation broke into smaller groups as they cross‑referenced reports, supplies, and scout notes. When they finally reached a lull, Alicia stepped closer to Jerry and placed a hand on his arm.

He jolted from his thoughts and turned, blinking once as if pulled back from somewhere miles away. “Alicia, what’s up?”

She gave him a brief, uneasy look at the phrase, her fingers tightening slightly around the edge of her coffee cup before she set it aside. Without speaking, she nudged her chin toward a quieter corner of the tent where the buzz of conversation thinned out.

“Do you have a moment?” she asked, her voice low. The way she held her arms close, almost folded but not quite, spoke of nerves more than formality.

“Of course,” Jerry said. “What’s on your mind?”

Alicia hesitated, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Her eyes flicked to the tent entrance, then to the map table, as if checking who might overhear. Finally, she drew a slow breath and squared her shoulders.

“I need to ask a favor,” she said. “Two of my scouts, Aika Thompson and Montley Leonard, went missing in Grid Nine.” Her fingers fidgeted briefly at the hem of her sleeve before she forced them still. “They’ve missed their last two check‑ins, but with how spotty radio comms are out here, we aren’t sure if it’s that or something more serious. If your people are out that way, can you look around for them?”

Jerry clapped her shoulder, steady and solid. “We’ll find them. I was planning to head into Grid Seven anyway, so it’s not much of a detour.”

Alicia nodded, though her gaze drifted unfocused for a moment. She swallowed hard, then managed a tight, appreciative smile. “Thanks, Jerry. It’s probably fine, and I’ll send a runner if they come back before you head out, but I worry.”

000

The midday sun filtered weakly through the canopy as Jerry stepped out of the command tent, the fabric flap falling shut behind him with a soft thud. The air outside felt heavier than it had going in, the kind of weight that settled on the chest rather than on the shoulders. He paused a moment at the edge of the clearing, letting his eyes adjust to the shifting greens and browns of the forest before he started forward.

The Kloden woods pressed close around the camp, more wall than wilderness at times, the towering trunks rising like pillars that blotted out most of the light. The humidity clung to him immediately, a warm sheen settling across his skin as he walked. The camp buzzed softly with restrained activity, voices low, movements economical. Soldiers drifted in small knots between tents, checking gear, trading short reports, or scanning the treeline with the instinctive paranoia that came after too many days spent under intermittent mortar fire.

Jerry moved through them without comment, eyes tracing familiar pathways between canvas shelters, cookfires, and ammunition stacks laid out under tarp covers. His mind wasn’t on the camp. It was on Grid Nine.

Alicia’s request lingered with him, not because he knew the missing scouts, but because something about the way she asked felt wrong. Aika and Montley were just names he had heard in passing, faces he probably would not recognize if they walked by, but even so, scouts did not simply vanish. They had habits, routines, little signals they used to keep track of where they were in the bush. When one of them missed a check‑in, the others always noticed. When two of them did, people started moving.

Alicia coming to him quietly, away from her own people, said more than any report could. She was worried. And if she was worried, then something out there had taken a sharp turn for the worse.

Which meant something odd was happening.

Jerry exhaled slowly and scrubbed a bit of mud from the edge of his glove. The last time the Pride had swept Grid Nine had been three days prior. The valley there was deep, carved by an old river long enough ago that the water had narrowed to a small stream choked with moss‑slick stones. The ridges towering over it cut radio contact to pieces. They had gone half a day without hearing a whisper from the rest of the squad, only reconnecting once they crested the far slope and getting flooded by the stuff.

That had been unnerving enough. But that valley had also been quiet. Too quiet. Not a sign of an Imperial patrol, not a stray track, not even a rusted canteen or a bootprint. At the time that silence had seemed like a relief.

Now it felt like a warning.

He drifted past a line of drying laundry strung between two tents, the shirts stirring faintly in the stagnant air. A few soldiers nodded in greeting; he returned the gesture absently and kept walking. His thoughts flicked to Marina. If anyone could pick out a trail in that valley, it would be her. She had an eye for the forest, a sense for the small disturbances others walked right past. Tracks. Hair caught on bark. Soil turned where it shouldn’t be. She would see it.

He would need her with him. No question.

A sharp crack rang out in the distance. Not gunfire. Just someone splitting firewood near the edge of the camp. Jerry’s shoulders still twitched at the sound, an ingrained reflex that had him chewing on his thoughts as his mind filed away the differences between this and that, the tension never quite leaving him.

He adjusted his coat and continued on. His boots left faint prints in the muddy dirt path that wound between the tents, the occasional puddle reflecting slanted beams of afternoon light. The air smelled of camp smoke and boiled roots from the midday meal, a pungent combination that reminded him of the stuffed cabbage his grandmother used to make.

He found himself near the supply tent before he realized where his feet had taken him. Two engineers worked nearby, patching a torn pack strap and sorting crates of replacement weapon parts. One of them lifted a hand in greeting before returning to his tools.

Jerry’s gaze drifted north again. The Imps had been adjusting their tactics over the past week. That alone was troubling. They had taken losses, several in fact, but instead of falling back into a defensive posture, they were growing erratic. Patrols moved in loose formations, appearing where they shouldn’t be and disappearing just as quickly. Some left obvious tracks as if they wanted to be followed, but every time someone tried to trace those paths, they led nowhere. Or they led into areas where freshly disturbed ground suggested a retreat that made no tactical sense.

It wasn’t sloppy. It was deliberate, small things arranged just wrong enough to unsettle anyone paying attention. Trails that looked too clear, gaps in movement where there should have been pressure, signs meant to pull the eye without offering answers. Not a trap and not a firefight waiting to erupt, just little nudges meant to make a man hesitate.

That hesitation was dangerous. In the woods, a moment of doubt was all it took for someone to fall behind, pick the wrong path, or lift their rifle a second too late. And out here, that second got people killed.

His jaw tightened. If the Imps were playing misdirection games, then there was a coordinating element behind it. Someone directing them. Someone dangerous. And if Aika and Montley had walked into one of those misdirections, then they weren’t simply lost.

They had been taken.

Jerry stopped beside a tall stump and leaned one hand against the weathered wood. The rough surface bit against his palm, grounding him. He shut his eyes for a moment, listening to the forest beyond the camp’s perimeter. The distant chatter of birds. The murmur of wind through the leaves. The faint rush of water over stone.

And beneath it, the barely audible hum of tension. He could feel it, the same way seasoned soldiers felt an artillery strike before it landed.

Something was shifting.

He opened his eyes and pushed off the stump, resuming his walk. He passed by a group of infantry sharing a low conversation beside a crate of ammunition. He overheard pieces of it.

“…they keep wearing those skull charms now. Creepy as hell…”

“…heard they’re hunting someone specific…”

“…it’s that Lion guy, the one who-”

Jerry kept moving before they noticed him listening.

The skull charms had appeared two days after the fight where he and Marina brought Radi down. He'd taken the rap for it, whether he wanted to or not, but it had burned his name into the minds and on the lips of the General's troops. He had seen the first of them himself, dangling from the belt of a dead Imperial scout they had taken down near Hill 21. A small animal skull, cleaned and polished. Symbolic. A memorial to their fallen General.

Some of Jaeger’s old troops were gunning for him. Personally. And by extension, for the Pride.

Three skirmishes in seven days. In all three, once the Imps spotted him or his girls, they fought to the death. No retreat. No surrender. No attempt to withdraw or regroup. Just raw, feral aggression.

The rumor mill had not helped. Word was spreading through the ranks that Gregor had personally set a bounty on his head for killing Radi. No conditions on it. Alive, dead, or halfway in between. And the unofficial whispers said the other members of the Pride were fair game too, anyone wearing their patch or operating with Jerry.

He didn't doubt those whispers. And he didn't like them.

He reached the edge of the path where a few crates sat under a tarp. The smell of ragnoline leaked faintly from one of them, sharp and chemical. Jerry paused, letting his gaze drift down the shadowed corridor of trees where the path vanished into the forest.

This was the route they would take tonight.

He considered the map again in his mind. Grid Seven. Then a detour into Grid Nine. Check for signs. Track trails. Recover Aika and Montley if they were alive. Recover what remained if they weren’t.

He stood there a long moment, the sounds of the camp blending into a dull hum behind him.

Finally, he turned back toward the Lion’s Den.

There was work to do.

000

The afternoon heat settled over the Kloden camp with a heavy, clinging stillness, the kind that made the forest feel closer than it already was. The Lion’s Den sat at the edge of the clearing where the ground dipped slightly toward a shallow ravine. Their tents formed a tight semicircle around a battered cookfire ringed with stones, a setup they had rebuilt half a dozen times since arriving in the woods. Smoke curled lazily upward from the pot suspended over the flames.

Juno knelt beside it, rolling up her sleeves as she stirred the contents with a long wooden spoon. The mixture inside bubbled in a sluggish, unconvincing way, a thick slurry of six different militia ration packs emptied into the water. Beside her, a small pile of peeled bulbs waited in a cloth sack, their pale surfaces still damp from the wash. Marina had dug them out of a half-shaded patch behind the tents earlier in the day, claiming they were edible enough if they boiled them long.

Wendy crouched nearby, her legs bouncing with restless energy as she sprinkled a pinch of her ever-present dried parsley into the pot. "Trust me, it helps," she insisted for the third time.

Juno sighed. "Helps what exactly? Mask the taste or make it worse?"

"Both," Wendy admitted brightly. "But I’m choosing to focus on the positive."

Jane sat on an overturned ammo crate, hunched forward with her shovel across her lap like a resting blade. Sweat dampened her hairline, and her expression hovered somewhere between irritation and boredom as she slurped from her bowl. "Boss has been gone a minute," she mumbled through her mouthful. "You know what the LT wanted with him?"

Juno didn’t look up from the stew. "The Sergeant didn’t say anything before he left, but you know him. He’s probably wandering the camp. We’re due out at dusk, so he’ll be back by then."

Jane grunted. "Hope he brings us something good. Alicia always bakes up something."

Wendy snorted so hard she almost inhaled parsley. "He asked me to stock up our tripmines and stuff before he left," she said after coughing twice. "I think he’s going to start setting those traps he talked about. Grid Seven is all contested right now, so we might be going up toward Grid Five where those three patrols the Scouts spotted were hunkering down." She shrugged, then grinned with open pride. "I think he’ll like the tweaks I made to the payloads."

Jane perked up. "Gave ’em some kick, huh? Good. Imps deserve it. I still think we’ve been going too light on the bastards."

Juno finally looked over her shoulder, giving Jane a pointed stare. "You’ve had plenty of chances to collect more notches on your shovel. Valkyrur knows we've been in enough skirmishes this week. They're gunning hard for the Boss."

Jane grinned, baring her teeth. "I know. Isn’t it great? They just come right to us." The satisfaction in her voice bordered on vicious.

The sound drew a groan from Marina, who sat cross-legged near the entrance of her tent, cleaning her rifle with steady, meticulous motions. She didn’t look up as she said, "I’m worried. The Imps aren’t making sense."

Wendy paused mid-stir. "What do you mean?"

Marina finally lifted her eyes, the usual neutrality in them edged with unease. "It's... hard to explain. Imps are a lot of things, but they aren't dumb and they aren't random, but everything we've seen reads like it. I was talking to the Boss about it and he agreed that it didn't make sense."

Jane rolled her eyes. "So they’re bad at dealing with the woods. Is that weird? They live in a snowy shithole for nine months of the year."

Juno shot her a quiet glare. "Jane, let her finish."

Marina nodded once, grateful. She set her rifle aside and rested her forearms on her knees. "They leave obvious trails. Broken branches, clear footprints, signs even rookies would spot. But then they disappear. No follow-up tracks. No movement. It feels wrong. Off. Like they’re leading us somewhere, or away from something. But not cleanly. It feels… artificial. Forced."

Wendy’s brows knit. "You think they’re baiting us?"

"Maybe," Marina said. "Or maybe they’re being baited too. I just know it doesn’t feel natural. All the signs are there, but they don’t line up. It’s the kind of thing that gets people killed if we walk into it blind."

The four women fell quiet, each absorbing that in her own way. Marina rarely spoke with that much certainty unless she meant it. And once it was said aloud, every one of them could recall their own moments of unease over the past few days.

Wendy stirred the pot again, the steam rising in faint, wavering curls. "I don’t like it," she muttered.

"Neither do I," Juno admitted softly.

Jane’s expression flattened, her earlier mirth draining away as she glanced toward the dark wall of trees beyond their tents. "Yeah," she said quietly. "Me neither."

The forest seemed to press closer at that moment, the shadows heavier, the distant birdsong growing thinner. Every woman there felt it.

The sense that something in the Kloden woods had begun to shift.

A few minutes later, the crunch of familiar footsteps approached their small camp. Jerry stepped into view, rubbing his hands together lightly as if shaking off lingering thoughts before crouching beside the fire.

He grabbed a bowl from the stack, and Wendy ladled stew into it before he even had to ask. He accepted it with a nod, though his eyes had already drifted to the girls’ faces.

Juno noted it immediately. "What’s the plan?"

Jerry stirred the bowl once, then set it on his knee. "We’re moving at dusk. Grid Seven first. After that, we’re making a detour into Grid Nine." His expression hardened. "Alicia’s scouts went missing. We’re going to go find them."

A heavy silence fell.

Marina’s spine straightened. Jane’s grip tightened around her shovel. Wendy swallowed hard.

Juno nodded once. "Then we get ready."

Whatever the Imperials were up to, they would find out. And when they did, they would make the red bastards pay for it.

000 [CONTENT WARNING: Allusions of torture, attempted sexual assault]

Aika Thompson pressed herself deeper into the shallow divot beneath the roots of the ancient tree, trying to flatten herself against the cold earth until she vanished entirely. Dirt smeared her skin and the backs of her legs, the damp soil clinging to her underclothes where her uniform had been torn away. Her breath came in tiny, shaking pulls, each one tight enough to hurt. She didn't wipe her tears. She barely blinked. Any movement felt like an invitation to die.

The woods felt wrong, too quiet, as if the trees themselves were listening.

Bootsteps moved through the brush only meters away, slow and deliberate, the cadence of men who knew they were hunting someone with nowhere left to run. Their voices drifted between the trunks in low, coarse murmurs. She couldn't make out the words, her heartbeat roared too loudly in her ears, but she understood the tone. Mocking. Irritated. Confident. They were enjoying themselves.

Montley screamed again.

It tore through the forest like a knife.

Aika clamped both hands over her ears, but nothing muted the sound fully. It had been three hours since they were snatched. Three hours since the two of them followed what looked like a fresh footpath, curious enough to check it, unaware enough to walk right into the ambush. The Imps had come out of the brush like shadows, knocking them down, binding wrists and knees before either could shout for help.

They dragged them to a small clearing. A makeshift camp. A place so quiet and tucked away she might have walked past it a hundred times without noticing.

Then the threats began.

One of the men had ripped her boots off and thrown them aside like trash. Another tore her pants down to her knees, laughing as he told her exactly what they were going to do to her if she did not talk. The third leaned close enough for her to smell his breath as he explained what would happen if she resisted. The fourth held the rope.

She remembered all of their faces. She wished she didn’t.

Montley had tried to stand up for her, tried to bark something brave before they drove a rifle butt into his ribs and kicked him to the ground. Then the beating started, vicious and methodical, each strike landing with the sickening thud of boots, of gun butts, of fists on meat. His first scream came moments later. It still echoed in her bones.

Aika hadn't planned to run. Not alone.

But she had felt the rope around her wrists loosen once, just once, and instinct took over. Vyse had shown her a stupid trick months ago, a way to slip a binding by twisting her wrists and bracing with her elbow. She had practiced it as a joke. Never once thought she would need it.

When it worked, she bolted.

She didn't look back. She wasn't strong enough to.

Now she lay curled beneath the roots, shaking so hard her teeth tapped together. Montley’s voice cracked again somewhere behind her, a raw, awful sound like something breaking. She pressed her palms tighter against her ears.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

The Imps moved closer. She could hear the soft clatter of their gear, the rasp of metal brushing against cloth. They weren’t wearing armor anymore. They had stripped down to shirts and rough coats tied at their waists. Ready for quiet work. Ready for her. They carried knives, hatchets, and all kinds of other things. Implements meant for cutting, for skinning, for them. For her, and Montley.

A boot stopped inches from her hand. She bit down on her knuckle until she tasted blood.

They murmured to each other again, low and casual, the kind of quiet voices men used when they were already sure of the ending. The tone chilled her. Amused. Impatient. Certain, as if they were discussing a task they had done before and expected to enjoy doing again.

Aika squeezed her eyes shut. She’d followed Vyse into the militia because he swore Gallia would be different from their homeland, that the fighting here would be simple, clean, nothing like the borderlands they’d grown up in. He made it sound like an adventure, like the two of them could carve out a place in a country that wasn’t theirs. She’d wanted to believe him. Wanted to believe she could be brave if she tried hard enough, that the world outside their home wouldn’t break her the moment it noticed her.

None of his stories had sounded like this.

The forest seemed to breathe around her, every shift of air sliding across her skin like something alive and watching. The pressure of it settled over her in a heavy, choking weight that made her feel smaller than she ever had in her life. Every leaf-rustle felt like fingers brushing her shoulder, testing her hiding place, searching for the exposed part of her she couldn’t protect. Even the faintest breeze curled against her bare legs and made her want to sob.

Another scream tore through the trees. Montley again. Higher this time, strained and fraying at the edges. Then a sound followed, wet, heavy, final, and the silence that rushed in afterward crushed her chest like a stone.

Aika’s hands shook so violently she dug her nails into the dirt to keep them still. She clawed trenches into the soil, needing the pain in her fingertips to keep herself grounded. She wanted to go back for him. She wanted to be someone who charged in despite the terror choking her. Someone brave. Someone like the stories Vyse used to tell when he talked her into leaving home.

But she couldn’t forget the way the men looked at her. The way their eyes crawled over her skin. The way they spoke to her. Those promises they made. Those vivid, snarling threats they whispered because they wanted her to panic before they ever laid a hand on her. She had no illusions about what would happen if they caught her now.

Death would be mercy compared to what they intended.

Aika curled tighter, breath stuttering hard enough to ache. She didn’t know if anyone would come. Not today. Maybe not ever. She didn’t know if Montley was alive or if the wet sound she heard had been the end of him. All she knew was the truth clawing at her ribs, sharp and cold and absolute.

If they found her, she wouldn’t survive what came next.

She pressed her forehead against the gnarled roots above her, trying to disappear inside the rough bark, trying to quiet the frantic pounding of her heart. Her voice came out as a thin, broken whisper, barely more than breath.

"I’m sorry, Montley. I’m so, so sorry."