While the sky was still dark, there were telltale signs of the morning in the air. Birds began to sing, the night became lighter, and Fai could even hear the cooks begin preparations for breakfast.

Fai didn't sleep at all that night. Instead, he silently stood watch over the four remaining teens, all managing to fall into a deep sleep in their cots. Az and Nagan were woken up earlier by the medics, however. They had developed fevers due to their infections.

"I can't imagine the stress they went through helped any," he remembered the medic saying after giving the two teens a mild sleeping draught, lulling them back to sleep quickly. "Their wounds will heal fine, but..."

The medic only shook her head and walked away after that. Fai didn't need to hear the rest of it, however. He knew what she was trying to say.

Fai turned his head as the infirmary's tent flap moved to the side, more out of curiosity to see who was entering, only to tense where he sat. He locked eyes with the last person he wanted here. Without any warning, he stood and strode over to the visitor, keeping his rage in check. The last thing he wanted was for his kids to wake up and see the man who cared nothing for them.

Rorric Dagmire stopped and blinked in surprise as Fai approached. "Good to see you well, Fai. I was not expecting you to be here. I was told Nagan and the others were here—"

"You come with me," Fai seethed under his breath, giving Rorric no room but to turn around. "Out."

Rorric gave a resigned sigh, almost as if he was expecting this to happen, and followed Fai's request to get out. Once they were outside, Fai began leading him toward the back of the camp. Not once did Rorric question where they were going, only passively following Fai through the morning crowd. It wasn't dense enough for him to lose sight of Professor Fai, but there were enough people for rumors to spread quickly. Whispers traveled among them, and those close enough saluted to the general.

Fai then marched up to a larger tent, flinging the flap aside and not bothering to hold it aside for Rorric. Rorric brushed the fabric aside to step inside. He was met with a desk covered with reports. At a glance, it looked as if the desk was just as disorganized as he was, but he then spotted an odd pattern in the documents. Some were lined up while others sat in neat piles. Some even had ink slashes through them as if whoever did it disagreed with what was written. It took a moment for him to realize whose desk they stared at. Nonetheless, Rorric didn't ask why they were in Meixong's tent. Instead, he waited for the once-combat professor of Carvolier to speak first. And speak he did.

"Are you proud of yourself? Sacrificing the school and your students along with it?" Fai began, venom lacing his tone.

"Fai, I know you're angry—"

Fai cut him off with a bark of laughter. "Angry? Anger doesn't cover the half of what I'm feeling right now. Anguish, guilt, fury I suppose. And I'm not seeing any of that from you!"

Rorric flinched back as Fai roared at him, a little stunned that the professor had lost his temper so quickly. He set his expression to neutrality soon after, however.

"I suggest you calm yourself, Fai. I am still your superior, both as a general and as the Headmaster of Carvolier, and I do not appreciate being spoken to in such a way."

"And you still dare claim the title of Headmaster? Carvolier doesn't even exist as a school anymore!" Fai gritted his teeth as he took a few steps toward Rorric. "You can't brainwash me like the Council has done to you! By the gods, Rorric, haven't you ever had a backbone in your life?"

Rorric set his jaw. "Excuse me?"

"You hear me loud and clear. This isn't the first time you've done this, either. Don't you dare deny it!"

"I'm afraid I lost your line of thought. Please elaborate."

"You want me to spell it out for you? Fine." Fai dropped his arms to his sides. While some would see it as a relaxed stance, Rorric knew it was the combat professor readying himself to react in any way he needed to. "Not only have you abandoned the man's son, you abandoned Nageth when he needed protection the most. As much as everyone tries to forget, Nageth was no fighter; he was a historian and archivist. A seeker and sharer of knowledge. But you let the Council label him a heretic. Did you ever stop and think what that did to him?"

"He did not fall far. I made sure to give him an offer too good to refuse."

Fai's mind flashed to some of the last moments he remembered of his mentor. From the torn letter—a familiar seal ruined to the point of unrecognition—to the anger, to the bottomless grief as Nageth asked the void what he did wrong. With a single letter, the man's livelihood was ruined to the point there was nothing left. There were few options left for scholars labeled a heretic by the Council.

"It wasn't an offer too good to refuse, it was an offer he had no choice in taking," Fai replied bitterly. "So are those the types of games you like to play? Pulling at the strings but claiming that you were only doing what you thought was best for the person? What about the two children who died yesterday? Did you think they were better off dead?"

That was when Rorric shot a warning look at Fai. "This conversation is over. Now, there's something else I needed to discuss with you—"

"You're a coward, Rorric," Fai snapped. "A coward! By this point, I can't tell if you're willing to follow the Council's sick whims or are completely blind to what's happening! We're sending letters to parents, telling them their child will never come home! The man you dare call a brother, his son had to kill to survive! He is barely fourteen years old, and he killed several men! That will haunt him for the rest of his life! Does this mean nothing to you?"

"We cannot and will not always be there to protect him. I am teaching him how to protect himself."

Many emotions crossed Fai's face. Pain, desperation, outrage, until it finally settled to indifference.

"So that's all it is, isn't it. You only care for the boy and would let him watch his friends die around him. All for the sake of making sure he can protect himself, right? You know the boy won't die. You were once a man I respected, but now I see you do not deserve it." Fai roughly shoved past Rorric, stopping by the entrance of the tent. "Do not try speaking to me as a friend again."

Just as he stepped outside the tent, Fai jumped at someone grabbing his arm tightly. On instinct, he jerked his arm away, part of him thinking it was Rorric trying to stop him, but someone else stumbled into view. Meixong shot him an inquisitive look before it set back into neutrality. They let go of his arm. There were many things Fai wanted to ask Meixong at that moment—most of all, what they had found—but Meixong glanced inside the tent where Rorric stood. With a minuscule nod, Meixong turned to Rorric.

"I was informed of your arrival, General Dagmire, and have arranged a tent for you to stay in if you wish. I recommend getting some rest, same as I will be, and I'll reveal my findings further into the morning."

"That is very kind of you, Hark—"

"General Meixong would be more appropriate in this situation."

Rorric paused before clearing his throat. "My apologies, General Meixong. I did not mean that in a way to denounce your title."

"Thank you. A page can lead you to your tent." Meixong motioned to a young man who had been standing off to the side. "Once again, I recommend you rest. We've all had a long night."

"Indeed we have." Rorric walked out of the tent and past the two of them, giving each of them a nod. "General Meixong, Captain Fai. I will see you in a couple hours."

It was mid-morning when they all reconvened in Colonel Warven's tent. Only Meixong, Fai, Rorric, and Jedan remained inside, the servants dismissed, and the tent closed off to the outside. Meixong stationed two guards at the entrance, instructing them to only let dire emergencies reach any of them inside. Hopefully, they knew the definition of dire. Whatever information Meixong had wasn't classified, but there was a ticking clock above their heads, and Meixong wanted to get ahead of it as much as they could.

"I don't want to take much of your time, so I'll keep this brief." Meixong set two items covered in cloth on Jedan's desk. One nearly spanned the length of the desk while the other was smaller but contained multiple things. "We were met with no resistance while entering and moving around the town. Nothing remained."

"I don't know if that's reassuring or bothersome," Jedan sighed. "If you were met with a fight, at least that would justify the delay we're now facing."

Meixong gave Jedan a sharp look. "Your definition of 'justification' differs vastly from mine, then. If you'll let me finish, you'll start to understand what we're up against. In fact, you just might be left wondering how any of those kids made it out alive."

Jedan remained silent as Meixong continued to stare.

"You learn quick." Meixong turned to face Fai and Rorric. "When I say nothing remained, I mean there was no one there. No people, no dragons, and no bodies. But the evidence of their struggle matched Sergeant Elvar's report accurately. There was a strong metallic scent all throughout, and bloodstains were everywhere. One thing he didn't report, however, was the sigils drawn on the walls surrounding the main reservoir. It's possible he missed them in the panic, so I won't fault him for that, but it also took us several hours to reach them. The Kinsmen there may have drawn them afterward, and perhaps that's the reason for the lack of bodies."

"So you've confirmed the Kinsmen were at that location?" Rorric asked.

"Highly suspected. Those sigils match the ones found in known Kinsmen hideouts. There were also obscured rooms found once we cleared the Lockpin Mist that contained the remnants of other rituals along with a supply of food. More subtle casting methods were used, hence why the kids didn't detect anyone or notice anything was wrong at first."

Rorric, "Do you think it was a trap?"

"For who? Any wayward squadron the Council threw at them? No, I think it's highly unlikely. It doesn't fit the patterns of the Kinsmen. You could argue that maybe this wasn't the Kinsmen after all, but again, highly unlikely and there's no reason to believe it's not. Nearly every Kinsmen hideout we've cleared has been focused on rituals and experimentation. They focused on hiding rather than traps. Furthermore, there were no traces of any alarm spells or triggered alert systems. That's probably how the kids got so far, someone must've seen them. As far as evidence suggests...most of this was triggered out of coincidence. They weren't targeted, but caught in the worst scenario imaginable. If anything, the only reason they aren't dead now is that they weren't chased farther than the town walls. They weren't far from the town, after all."

Fai swallowed past the lump in his throat. "Why do you say that?"

"Now we're heading into more speculative territory. There were two areas where there was evidence of a battle, just as Nagan had said. One on the path leading up to the reservoir, and one in the temple courtyard. The one by the reservoir was a bit harder to judge due to all the rubble—I don't doubt Bizo broke through the wall, there were bloody claw marks—and it's clear it was a much more gruesome scene. We were able to count five distinct blood pools, but there could've been more. The largest—dragon's blood—covered a large area, and there were, ah...pieces, you could say, left behind that we're pretty sure are human. Understandable, I'm sure the remaining Kinsmen didn't have time to collect each and every piece after a dragon tore their comrades to shreds.

"The temple courtyard was easier to count, as it was a larger area, and I can only guess Ivisian was stopped by the Kinsmen's dragons. No dragon blood was detected. They were more prepared to ward off a dragon after they saw what Bizo could do. Our original count was twelve, but there was one pool by the fountain that was too small for a body. I'll have to ask to confirm, but I believe that's where Icarion was injured."

Meixong suddenly strode back to the desk, unwrapping the cloths. It was a bloodied sword, a shattered onyx, and pieces of a bow.

"This is all we could find." Meixong's tone was solemn as they carefully smoothed out the fabric. "We took any salvageable piece of the bow, and the onyx and the sword were found next to the path leading down to the main town. All of them are things issued by the Council. Unless we miraculously find their bodies, this is all that remains of Carthadeus Honoria and Gathen Farvell. I wanted to at least give their families something to bury."

There was a long pause before Rorric spoke. "Are you saying they were up against sixteen Kinsmen at minimum?"

"Seventeen. There had to be at least one person to complete the job. I think the numbers span past twenty, however. Those kids are really something when you see what they lived through, but all I can think about is how we sent them to their death."

Everyone stared at the items on the table, a testament to who was lost. Fai carefully stepped up to the desk next to Meixong, his hand reaching out and gently brushing against each thing. With a heavy sigh, he laid his hands flat against the desk's surface, hanging his head in disbelief.

"This is really all that's left of them?" he asked, tilting his head to the side to look at Meixong. With a grimace, they nodded.

"That's it."

Silence hung in the air as everything sunk in. Faintly, they could hear the murmurs of people talking as they passed outside the tent, unaware of what had happened in the last twelve hours. As much as Meixong wanted to march up to the Council and yell at them for their negligence, they knew that wouldn't bring them back. But at least they could make sure this never happened again, even if that meant defying direct orders from the Council. As long as those kids remained in their unit, this would never happen again.

Rorric cleared his throat, gaining the attention of everyone in the tent.

"If that's the end of your report," Rorric paused, only continuing when Meixong confirmed that was all, "then I have something else I need to discuss with you all, especially General Meixong and Captain Fai."

Meixong nodded and crossed their arms, resisting the urge to snark something under their breath. "Go ahead."

Rorric pulled two envelopes out of his inner pocket, and dread pooled into their stomach as they caught sight of the Council of Thirds' seal. Without a word, he handed one to Meixong and the other to Fai.

"You have been summoned to the front," Rorric said hesitantly. "I'm sorry, especially after all that had happened, but a recent surge has left the situation urgent. You are to take your troops requested and report in Isokios, Hecatite in three days. Colonel Warven, you're to remain here and continue your investigative work."

Meixong didn't even bother opening their envelope. Fai, however, had already opened and begun reading through his.

"I don't know what you're playing at here, General Dagmire, but this feels like a slap in the face," Meixong stated.

"We are tight on messengers, so I thought it best to deliver these myself since I would be here nonetheless."

Everyone jumped, even Meixong, when Fai suddenly tore his letter in half. Whatever was left, he crumpled it into a wad before throwing it into the brazier meant to keep the tent warm.

"I'll be taking anyone over the age of twenty," Fai said calmly.

Rorric only nodded, not daring to oppose the former combat professor.

"Then I'll expect your arrival in Hecatite." With that, Rorric gave a polite nod to each of them before leaving the tent.