The Road to Nowhere

The night closed around us like a suffocating shroud, oppressively thick and final. The torches were the only light outside, catching the wind and casting grotesquely long shadows on the stone walls of the barracks. The air tasted of damp earth, of oiled steel, of something unuttered.

The barracks were quiet, but not a quiet that came with peace. The sort that hung in the air like before a storm.

I cinched the strap of my pack, fingers sinking into worn leather. My sword hung against my hip, heavier than normal.

I wasn't the only one who sensed it.

Dain kept shifting his weight from foot to foot, glancing toward the knights at the gate. Varin's jaw was clenched, his hand almost touching the hilt of his blade. Coren grumbled under his breath, fidgeting with the buckle of his cloak for the third time.

And Asura had not even moved.

She hadn't said anything since we got assigned to this mission. Hadn't questioned. Hadn't reacted.

But I could tell by the way her fingers hovered over her dagger. She was waiting.

For something to go wrong.

The Road to Nowhere

We rode out beneath a starless sky, clouds low, thick and immobile. The knights at the front of our procession rose high in their saddles, backs perfectly erect, metal glistening in the dim illumination from the slim moon. They did not speak to us.

All that was heard was the thump-thump of hooves on dirt, and the occasional creak of leather saddles.

I looked straight ahead, my hands steady on the reins, but my mind whirled. We were given vague instructions.

Take the road east. Reach the outpost. Reinforce the guards.

But no one had heard of an outpost that far to the east.

The knights who rode ahead knew what we did not.

I could sense it in the way they wouldn't look us in the eye when we departed.

And that could only mean one thing — we weren't coming back.

The First Arrow

It came without warning.

A high whistle through the air — then the soft, sickening sound of flesh yielding to steel.

The leading knight hardly had the time to gasp before he toppled from his mount, an arrow sunk deep in his throat.

Everything happened at once.

Horses reared. Swords were drawn, metal on metal scraping. The trees came alive with motion — dark shapes darting between branches, silent, purposeful, measured.

Not bandits.

Something else.

Another arrow whistled through the night, embedding itself in a knight's shoulder and sending him tumbling. He had almost no time to scream before a blade leaped from the darkness, completing what the arrow had begun.

I wrenched my sword free, heart racing, looking to the shadows for the next attack.

And then—they came.

Black-clad figures moving in silence, their faces obscured by deep hoods.

They didn't shout. Didn't curse.

Didn't hesitate.

They moved in tandem as if they were components of the same body, striking fast.

My first attacker came low, his knife aimed for my ribs. I twisted and caught the strike with my own, steel grinding against steel. Sparks flared. He was fast — faster than he had any right to be — but I drove ahead, throwing him off balance.

He hardly stumbled before he moved again.

No hesitation. No wasted motion.

They were not fighting to the death.

They were struggling to gauge us.

Asura Moves First

As soon as I saw her move, I knew.

She was not like the rest of us.

She didn't hesitate.

Didn't fumble. Didn't struggle.

She carried herself as if the world had already known it was unthinkable to touch her.

The first attacker lunged — she dodged. A single, precise motion. Her dagger flashed, snapping tendons open, and slitting throats.

No wasted effort.

No wasted breath.

She never took her eyes off the next opponent.

She never needed to throw two strikes.

The scuffle around me turned to noise. My fight was just a collection of reactions — blocks, parries, footwork repeated until muscle memory. But Asura's battle was unlike any other.

She wasn't battling for her life.

She was fighting to win.

And she was winning.

A War That Was Never Ours to Win

Then—it stopped.

First, they were attacking. The next, they stepped back.

Not running. Not retreating.

Stopping.

The tallest of them stood at the center of the road. Their hood had been low enough that I could almost see their face — young, expressionless, blank.

Their head tilted slightly.

Then, they turned and left.

As time went on, the others followed suit.

Not a single word was spoken.

Not a single body was retrieved.

They didn't leave the school because they lost.

They left because they were done.

Dain is Dead. The Knights Do Not Care.

We rode back in silence.

Dain's body was bound to his horse, his mantle wound tightly about him. We had left with five. We returned with four.

Aldric was waiting.

He didn't even change his expression when he saw Dain's body. He simply nodded once.

No surprise. No grief.

Nothing.

Coren was the first to dismount, halting, hoarse with exhaustion. "That wasn't an ambush."

Aldric met his gaze. "You completed your mission."

Coren's fists turned into clenched hands. "You knew, didn't you? You knew this was going to happen.

Silence.

Aldric stared at him for a long moment, then looked away. "Get some rest."

And that was it.

Dain was dead.

And no one cared.

A Conversation in the Dark

I didn't sleep that night.

I sat at the edge of my cot, my brain going over everything that had happened, everything that hadn't been said.

I found her in the courtyard.

Asura stood there, arms folded beneath the torchlight, dark hair shifting in the wind.

She didn't look up as I came over to her.

I stopped beside her.

"They weren't just fighting us." My voice was more subdued than I intended it to be. "They were testing us."

She said nothing.

I exhaled slowly. "You know why."

Finally, she turned.

Her face was stone, her black eyes as blank and cold as I had ever seen.

Then she said something that turned my stomach.

"You ever think why no one talks about them?"

I frowned. "Who?"

Her gaze didn't waver. "The ones in the dark. The ones who cross without a sound. The ones who killed Dain."

I swallowed. In my ears, my pulse was suddenly too loud.

She was right.

There were no reports of them in the kingdom.

The knights didn't hunt them.

And the nobles ignored their existence.

Asura turned to the torchlight again, her voice softening a little.

"We didn't go up there to fight them, Alarion."

She allowed the silence to hang, to allow the heaviness of her words to sink in.

Then — "We were sent to be judged."

A slow breath.

"And we passed."

Asura didn't look at me. She stared ahead, into the torchlight as if she could see beyond it—something only she could comprehend.

I clenched my fists. "What do you mean we passed?"

She didn't answer.

Not at first.

Instead, she allowed quiet to fill the air around us, her fingers absentmindedly running across the blade-worn leather of her dagger's sheath. She always did that — that hushed, inscrutable waiting.

Finally, she exhaled. "If we were a failure, we wouldn't be here,"

The words were a weight that sank in my breast.

Not lost. Not defeated. Failed.

I swallowed, the pieces falling into place in my head.

This wasn't just an ambush.

It was something deliberate.

Something planned.

And the worst part? The knights knew.

It was the realization that made my skin itch and made my stomach twist.

"They sent us there to die."

Asura cocked her head a little like she was thinking it over.

Then, finally, she spoke. "Not all of us."

That was the difference, wasn't it?

Dain had failed.

The rest of us had passed.

I took a deep breath and felt cold air in my lungs.

What sort of test had we just survived?

Unspoken Warnings

When I came back the barracks were quiet, but not the kind of quiet that meant sleep.

The kind of quiet that meant all were awake and listening.

I thought I perceived it in the way the others lay in their cots, unmoving, but with their breathing just a little bit too controlled. In the manner in which Coren's fingers drummed his knee, impatient. How Varin's hand stayed too long near his blade.

No one spoke about it.

But we all knew.

Something had changed.

The next morning, Aldric called the recruits together in the courtyard. Not all of them. Only the ones who had been assigned the mission.

We lined up while he walked in front of us, heavy robe swinging with each stride. His eyes flicked across us, weighing, calculating. Assessing.

Finally, he stopped.

"You are alive."

The words sat there, simple, bereft of any pretension of compassion.

A test. That's what this was. The mission was never about bolstering an outpost. It was never about protecting the kingdom.

It had been about survival.

And it didn't matter to the knight order who gained survival, only that one of you did.

I clenched my jaw. I had come here to become a knight. To fight for something larger than myself.

But this was not the sort of kingdom that needed protection.

Aldric's gaze settled on me. He kept it up just a fraction of a second longer than the others. Then, he turned away.

"You'll be getting your next orders soon. Dismissed."

Just like that.

Dain was gone.

And no one cared.

The Weight of Knowing

The others followed out of the courtyard, their steps tight, shoulders tight. They walked without saying a word. What was there to say?

I lingered a moment longer, watching how Aldric faded into the stone crevices of the fortress, back too straight, too solid.

He knew something.

And so did Asura.

I found her where I always did, alone in the training yard, going through forms with slow, exacting motions.

The blade glittered, cruel and predacious, the angles of her footwork calculated as though she'd hold the lines across the world.

I pulled up, stopping just within arm's reach. She didn't break her rhythm.

I watched her move a moment longer, then spoke.

"We're not knights."

She didn't stop.

Didn't hesitate.

But I noticed — the way her fingers tightened just a little bit around the grip of her dagger.

She agreed.

I exhaled. "You knew, didn't you? Before we even left."

This time, she did pause. For a split second.

She then turned to me, lowering her blade, her expression still inscrutable. "What do you think I knew?"

I studied her, looking for something — anything. But she was unreadable.

I shook my head. "You are not just another recruit."

For a moment her face lit with a flicker of amusement. "No."

She didn't deny it.

She never did.

I took a slow step closer. "Then what are you?"

She tilted her head a touch and considered. Then, she simply said:

"Trying to figure that out still."

Those words should have registered as deflection. But they didn't.

They sounded honest.

For the first time, I noticed it — not just the control, not just the skill.

The uncertainty.

She had been just surviving for so long, she had lost the memory of what it meant to live for anything else.

And that was when I first thought that, maybe we weren't so different after all.

A Warning That Came Too Late

That night, I didn't sleep.

I lay on my cot, staring at the ceiling, thoughts agitated, cycling through the same questions.

I needed answers.

And I was through waiting for somebody to hand them to me.

So I stepped outside the barracks, out into the cold, my breath curling in the torchlight.

So I wasn't shocked to see her already outside.

Asura stood by the far edge of the courtyard, arms crossed, staring off into nowhere. She didn't respond as I walked closer to her.

I pulled up next to her and watched the flames flickering in the wind.

"They weren't simply fighting us." My voice was quiet. "They were testing us."

A slow breath.

She nodded once.

I swallowed. "Why?"

This time, she glanced at me. I had known before she even opened her mouth, though, that I wasn't going to like what I was about to hear.

"Ever wonder why nobody talks about them?"

A chill crawled up my spine.

I didn't speak.

Asura kept her gaze steady. "The ones in the dark. Those who do not make their sound. The ones who killed Dain."

I breathed in, my heartbeat thudding against my ribs. She was right.

The kingdom did not have any in its  reporting.

The knights didn't hunt them.

The nobility acted as if they weren't there.

My mouth was dry. "Why?"

Asura turned back to the torchlight, lowering her voice.

"Because they were never supposed to be fought."

The words lingered between us, heavy and sinking deep.

I clenched my jaw. "Then what are they?"

A slow breath.

Her fingers skimmed the hilt of her dagger.

"A reminder."

I frowned. "Of what?"

She breathed out, her face inscrutable.

"That we don't decide who lives and who dies."