Chapter 2: The Seventh Morning (2)
Lien's lips moved silently, forming the words in perfect synchronization with the speech he'd memorized across six previous hearings. The same speech, word for word. The Empire's philosophy distilled into pure contempt for the weak.
"Only the strong survive the Black Cradle," Kael continued. "Only the ruthless graduate. You will be given one chance to prove your worth. Those who fail will fertilize the mountain soil. Those who succeed will become instruments of the Emperor's will."
A girl near the front began crying. Kael's eyes tracked the sound with predatory focus.
"Weakness is death," the instructor said. "Remember that when the forest swallows you."
Then his gaze swept across the assembled orphans, cataloging faces with the efficiency of a butcher examining livestock.
And stopped on Lien.
Three seconds. Kael's eyes locked onto Lien's face for exactly three seconds. Long enough that Lien's pulse spiked. Long enough that the hair on his neck stood up. Long enough that every instinct honed across seven lifetimes screamed warning.
This had never happened before.
In six previous loops, Kael had never noticed him on the first day. Lien had been invisible, unremarkable, just another terrified child in a sea of disposable orphans.
But now the instructor's eyes held something. Recognition? Curiosity? Assessment?
Kael's mouth curved into something that might have been a smile, then his attention moved on.
"You march to the forest in one hour," the instructor announced. "Prepare yourselves. Most of you won't return."
He turned and strode from the barracks, his boots echoing on the wooden floor.
The moment the door closed, chaos erupted. Children rushing to claim warmer clothes, forming desperate alliances, weeping openly. The dance of the doomed, playing out exactly as it had six times before.
Lien remained still, his mind racing.
He performed a mental roll call, matching faces to names from previous loops. Elara—check. Vrix—check. Sia—check. The boy who would break his leg in the first hour and freeze to death by noon—check. The twins who would kill each other fighting over a coat—check, check.
Then he reached a gap in the pattern.
Torin. Ten years old, red hair, survived the first week in every previous loop before dying in week two when he challenged Vrix for food rations.
Torin should be here.
Torin's bunk in the northeastern corner stood empty.
Lien stared at the vacant space, his blood running cold in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature.
A deviation. An anomaly. Something different in a loop that was supposed to be identical to the previous six.
Either the timeline had diverged before his regression point, or—
Or the Emperor was changing the parameters.
The orphans filed toward the exit, driven by the junior instructors' shouts. Lien fell into step with the crowd, his small body moving with the shuffling gait of a frightened child while his mind dissected implications.
He passed Elara. She glanced at him, her eyes wide with terror, and Lien looked through her like she was air. Six deaths. He'd mourned her six times. There was nothing left in him to feel.
The northern wind bit into his face as he stepped into the blinding white snow. One thousand children marched toward the forest in ragged formation, their breath forming clouds that dissipated into the gray morning.
Lien's gaze tracked upward, toward the mountains that ringed the Black Cradle. Somewhere beyond those peaks, three hundred miles south, Aethelgard waited. The capital. The Imperial Palace. The throne room where the Emperor sat, perhaps watching through methods Lien didn't yet understand.
I'm coming for you, Lien thought, his child's face blank, his hands curled into fists inside his too-thin coat. This loop or the next. Eventually, I'll reach you. And when I do—
He felt eyes on his back. Heavy. Calculating. Assessing.
Lien didn't turn. He kept marching with the others, just another small figure in the snow.
But his spine prickled with the certainty of being observed, and when he finally glanced back, he saw Kael standing motionless on the barracks steps, watching him specifically through the falling snow.
The instructor's expression was unreadable. But his hand rested on the leather journal at his belt—the same journal Lien had seen six times before, the same journal that appeared in every loop, filled with notations Lien had never been able to read.
As the frozen wind bit into his face and one thousand children marched toward their first trial, Lien felt the instructor's eyes on his back like a blade pressed against his spine, and knew that this loop was already different.
**