The assembly hall had been built to intimidate.

  It stretched upward for what felt like miles, ceiling lost in darkness, walls lined with displays showing active corruption zones and entity emergence patterns. Tiered seating descended toward a central platform, and as students filed in, Valoris felt the space weighing on her like physical pressure. This room had been designed to make people feel small.

  It was working.

  Pod K found seats together, not by design but by the natural clustering of people who shared temporary housing. Valoris ended up between Zee (who'd claimed the aisle seat with tactical efficiency) and a quiet boy she hadn't spoken to yet.

  Across the section, she could see students from other pods. The girl with severe features sat rigid and alone several rows down, close to the front. Quinn was three rows back, sitting perfectly still, occasionally moving their lips in silent counting. Somewhere in the crowd was the boy who'd already gotten written up twice for tampering with equipment. The infamous furniture disassembler of Pod O. She didn't see anyone she thought could be him, but the story had spread through multiple pods during dinner.

  Screens around the hall flickered to life, showing the same image: ACADEMY INTAKE, YEAR 137. TOTAL CANDIDATES: 523.

  Five hundred and twenty-three fifteen-year-olds who'd passed entrance requirements and been deemed potentially capable of bonding with dimensional constructs.

  The lights dimmed.

  A woman walked onto the platform with the kind of presence that made silence spread like ripples. She wore the standard academy uniform but moved in it like someone wearing a weapon. Her face was weathered in ways that suggested years of exposure to things that shouldn't exist. And when she turned her head, Valoris caught sight of scars, not as extensive as her grandmother's, but present. Visible. Proof of service.

  "I am Commander Thrace," she said, voice carrying through the hall without amplification, without effort. "I oversee pilot training at this academy. For the next four years, your success or failure depends on my assessment. Some of you know this already. Most of you don't."

  She paused, gaze sweeping across the assembled students. Valoris felt that look pass over her like a physical touch: evaluation, measurement, judgment.

  "You are five hundred and twenty-three candidates. By the end of year one, you'll be three hundred. By summoning day at the end of year two, you'll be two hundred and fifty if you're lucky. Forty percent of you will not make it to summoning."

  She let that sink in. Let the mathematics of failure settle across five hundred minds simultaneously.

  Beside her, Valoris felt Zee go very still. The same mathematics she'd outlined at dinner–eight to ten years–now framed by the forty percent who wouldn't even make it that far.

  "Some of you will wash out during basic training because your bodies can't handle the physical demands. Some will wash out during tactical assessment because your minds can't handle the cognitive load. Some will wash out during meditation training because you can't achieve the mental states required for dimensional contact."

  Thrace's expression didn't change, but her voice dropped slightly, becoming harder somehow.

  "And some of you will make it to summoning and fail there. You'll kneel at the reservoir, you'll open your consciousness to the dimensional boundary, and you'll find that what waits on the other side doesn't find you worthy. Or worse. You'll find that your mind breaks when it touches something vast and alien and incomprehensible. We'll pull you out screaming, and you'll spend the rest of your life trying to forget what you saw."

  Someone near the back made a small sound of fear, or realization, or the beginning of understanding what they'd signed up for.

  "But let's say you succeed." Thrace's tone shifted, becoming almost conversational. "Let's say you're among the forty percent who make it through training and psychological evaluation and dimensional sensitivity testing. Let's say you summon successfully and bond with your mech and graduate as certified pilots. You know what happens then?"

  She gestured to the screens, which flickered to new images: corruption zones spreading across maps, entity emergence statistics climbing year over year, casualty reports from deployment zones.

  "You deploy. You fight. You kill entities that are trying to enter our reality from theirs. You spend months in corruption zones where physics doesn't work correctly and reality bends around you and dimensional exposure slowly poisons you from the inside. You watch squadmates die. You feel your mech take damage and experience it like wounds to your own body. You accumulate dimensional contamination with every deployment, every connection, every moment spent existing in two states simultaneously."

  She stopped walking. Stood perfectly still at the center of the platform.

  "If you're very good and very lucky, you'll get twelve or more years before the corruption advances far enough that you can no longer pilot. Ten years average. Some get less. Almost none get more. And when you can't pilot anymore, when the dimensional contamination has progressed too far, you'll retire to live with whatever damage you've accumulated… tremors, neural degradation, psychological trauma, physical transformation, all of the above."

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The silence in the hall was absolute. Five hundred and twenty-three students, all processing the same information: This will kill you. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. Certainly.

  Valoris glanced at Zee. Her expression was controlled, but her hands were clenched on the armrests hard enough that her knuckles showed white.

  Eight to ten years, she'd said. Worth it for family security.

  Did it still feel worth it, hearing it laid out this way?

  "So," Thrace said, almost gently. "Why do it?"

  No one answered.

  "Because someone has to. Because the entities are real and the corruption zones are spreading and if trained pilots don't stand between humanity and what's coming through those dimensional rifts, billions of people die. Because this is the cost. Because you chose to pay it."

  She let that settle for five long seconds.

  "You are here because you believe you have what it takes. Some of you are here because your families expect it. Some because you tested high enough to earn scholarships. Some because you think being a pilot makes you special, heroic, legendary." Her mouth quirked in something that wasn't quite a smile. "By the end of year one, you'll know which of those reasons was stupid."

  Scattered nervous laughter rippled through the hall.

  "Training and evaluation begins at oh-five-hundred tomorrow. Physical conditioning, tactical education, dimensional theory, meditation practice. You'll be exhausted every day. You'll question whether you're capable every day. Forty percent of you won't be. The ones who are..." She paused. "The ones who are will wish they weren't."

  Thrace turned and gestured to the screens, which changed to show something new: massive empty chambers carved into stone, each one containing a raised platform and nothing else. Dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe.

  "These are the mech bays," she said. "Empty. Waiting. At the end of year two, those of you who successfully summon will stand in these bays and your mechs will be there. Forty feet of dimensional substrate, shaped by your consciousness into weapons. Your other bodies. Extensions of yourselves that will let you fight things human bodies can't touch."

  The images rotated slowly, showing the empty platforms from different angles. Valoris felt a chill at the sight of all that absence, all that potential, all those spaces waiting to be filled with machines that would eventually poison whoever piloted them.

  "But first," Thrace said, "you have to earn the right to stand in those bays. You have to prove you're capable of the transformation. You have to survive four years of training designed to break everyone who isn't strong enough, disciplined enough, psychologically stable enough to become something more than human and less than whole."

  She swept her gaze across the assembly one final time.

  "Welcome to the academy. Don't die during intake week. It reflects poorly on your pod's statistics."

  The lights came up. Thrace walked off the platform without ceremony, without waiting for questions or reactions or the five hundred and twenty-three students to process what they'd just been told. Around Valoris, people started moving; standing, filing toward exits, voices rising in nervous chatter or determined silence. She sat frozen, staring at the screens still showing those empty mech bays, all that waiting absence.

  Ten years. Maybe twelve.

  Forty percent won't make it to summoning.

  The ones who do will wish they hadn't.

  "Well," Zee said beside her, voice carefully neutral but with something brittle underneath. "That was encouraging."

  Valoris turned to look at her. Zee's expression was controlled, but something in her eyes suggested she was recalculating. Still worth it? Still worth eight years of corruption for family security? What if I'm in the forty percent that doesn't even make it that far?

  "We should head back," Zee said finally. "Long day tomorrow."

  They filed out with everyone else, Pod K flowing back toward the barracks in small clusters, most people too overwhelmed to maintain conversation. The corridors felt different now, not just unfamiliar but significant. These hallways would become their entire world for the next four years. These walls would witness their transformation from ordinary humans into weapons.

  If they survived that long.

  Back in the barracks, students moved through evening routines with mechanical efficiency; changing into sleep clothes, claiming bathroom time, settling into bunks. The earlier chaos had been replaced by exhausted quiet. Valoris changed quickly, claimed her bunk, and lay staring at the ceiling while around her, Pod K settled into restless sleep.

  Twenty students. Two weeks together before permanent squad assignments. Some would become friends. Some would become rivals. Most would just be people she lived near while they all tried to survive the first cull. From her bunk she could see Quinn, three beds over, lying perfectly still with eyes open, staring at nothing. Counting something only they could perceive. Near the windows, Kaito had already fallen asleep, one arm thrown over his eyes, apparently unbothered by Thrace's warnings. Or at least performing confidence well enough to fool himself. Zee's bunk was in the back corner, and Valoris could just make out her silhouette, sitting up, keeping watch over the barracks like a sentry. Or maybe just unable to sleep, recalculating eight years of corruption against family security, wondering if the mathematics still added up.

  And somewhere in other barracks, hundreds of other students were doing the same thing. Lying in their bunks, processing Commander Thrace's words, asking themselves whether they'd made a terrible mistake.

  Forty percent won't make it.

  Eight to ten years average.

  The ones who do will wish they hadn't.

  Valoris closed her eyes and tried not to think about her grandmother's trembling hands, her silver eye, the way she'd said ten years like it was both a gift and a sentence. Sleep came slowly, reluctantly, and brought dreams of empty chambers waiting to be filled with machines built from dimensional substrate harvested from places human minds weren't meant to touch.

  She woke before dawn, as five hundred and twenty-three alarm clocks went off simultaneously across the academy, and the real work began.

  by Idiot Muffin

  UPDATES: Every Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, & Thursday (Evenings)

  Book One of the Epic Fantasy Series: Sovereign's Silent Path

  Title: Sylas of Cindaleer

  He was exiled as a prince, forgotten by a kingdom, but now, he is bound to a dead queen's will.

  Sylas of Cindaleer doesn’t wield a sword; he wields a mind, honed by ancient philosophies that compel others to follow his will.

  Raised in the shadows of a forsaken past, Sylas was meant to disappear. But a letter sealed in crimson wax, arriving from beyond the grave, pulled him into a world of deceit, schemes, and revenge. His mother’s final message is not a farewell; it’s a command for a grand new beginning.

  As the Holy Kingdom of Halewyn tightens its grip, hidden cults move to manipulate him, and legendary heroes rise to challenge him. Yet Sylas walks neither with tyrants nor rebels. He walks the Silent Path, one forged from recursive imagination.

  In a world governed by Laws and Marks, where Philosophers cultivate to conquer death and dominate souls, a lone Sovereign must uncover his true purpose...

  To walk beside him, you must accept his Mark.

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  (Note: This novel is originally published in Royal Road, so if you are reading it anywhere else, please come to Royal Road to read it and support me. Thankyou.)

  What to expect from this novel:

  1) Unconventional cultivation rooted in philosophy.

  2) Dual protagonists mirrored across two worlds.

  3) 21+ Laws of World and the abstract Laws of Mind, unlocked layer by layer.

  (ARC 4 is the training for Laws of World)

  4) Schemes, masks, and identity plays.

  5) Characters who feel, enemies that think, and tension that bites.

  6) An emotionally charged descent into ruin in search of meaning.

  7) Devoted passion from the author ^^