"Steel is not given to decorate the untested. It is given to weigh the soul."—Supreme Warden Chaghan
Two months had passed since the recruits first arrived on the island, lean, rag-wrapped survivors still bearing the scars of skirmishes past. They had trained beneath salt-heavy wind and sunless mornings, wearing dulled leathers patched too many times to count. Their helms had been mismatched, their greaves bent or split, their shields softened by sea rot. Even their blades were training copies, dulled iron that struck with a thud rather than a ring. If they expected anything on this day, it was perhaps a better-fitted version of the same. Slightly newer tunics. Maybe shields that didn't splinter when tapped. Nothing more.
They were wrong.
When they entered the training hall that morning, summoned without warning, they found the entire structure swept clean and silent. No drills. No instructors. No shouting. Only torches lit high above, their light dancing across the stone floor and the long row of iron-bound crates positioned near the rear wall.
Then the doors at the far end opened.
Boots echoed on stone. Three men stepped inside.
At the center was Chaghan, Supreme Warden of the Stormguard, his blacksteel armor polished to a dark gleam, runes etched into every plate with painstaking precision. His eyes were sharp beneath the shadow of his helm, and though he carried no weapon, the weight of his presence was felt like iron across the neck. At his sides walked two Stormguard officers, tall and grim, cloaked in storm-gray and bearing the twin falcatas of senior wardens.
The cohort stood still, unsure whether to bow or brace. They had seen Chaghan only from a distance, during the ceremony on the first day or glimpsed along the cliffs. But never this close. Never within reach of his gaze.
He walked past them without pause and stood before the sealed crates. Only then did he turn.
"You came here wearing what you could scavenge. What you could steal. You trained in hand-me-downs worn thin by a hundred failures before you. That was necessary."
His voice was steady, low but clear enough to fill the hall.
"But if you will fight beneath our banner, then you will not fight in scraps."
With a sharp gesture, one of the officers stepped forward and broke the first seal. The crate creaked open. Black felt folded back. And inside was steel.
Not rusted. Not blood-stained. Not looted from the dead. Forged. Delivered.
Straight from the Stormtide Bastion in the freedmen's realm, across the eastern sea, borne by trireme and cart, now resting in silence before those who had never once owned a blade of their own.
"You are not Stormguard," Chaghan said. "Not yet. But you serve the Blacktide now. You march with our auxiliaries, and that means you carry our steel. These are standard issue. You will earn better only if you deserve it."
He stepped aside.
"There is a hall far from here. The Merit Hall. It sits within the Bastion that forged these arms. Every battle you survive, every kill you mark, every command fulfilled, it is recorded. The merit you gain in war becomes your coin. That coin can be exchanged for better steel."
Chaghan's gaze swept the cohort.
"You may earn weapons forged by the Ember Masters. Armor blessed by high forgemagi. Runeworked helms fitted for warcasters. You may even request personalization if your rank and merit allow. But nothing is given without cost. Not in the Stormguard."
Still, no one moved.
The stewards began to open the crates. One by one, they revealed rows of Tidecut Spears, short and double-edged, with equal weight in shaft and blade. Beside them lay curved falcata swords, their blades shaped for cleaving and stabbing around the lip of a shield. Each piece gleamed with the oil of the forge, not a trace of rust or wear. They were balanced, tempered, alive.
The shields followed. Oval Boeotian patterns with twin indentations, wrapped in black leather over treated stormwood, rimmed in darksteel. Glyphs etched the inner rim, some for shock absorption, others for resistance against flame or ice.
Then came the armor.
Blacksteel thoraxes molded to the chest. Greaves that wrapped from shin to knee with locking straps and outer rune lines. Shoulder guards shaped to deflect downward strikes. Pteryges hung from the cuirass, layered in treated black leather, supple and silent. The helms were full-faced kraneion, visored with a slit for the eyes and adorned with plumes for those marked for command.
Even the footwear was unlike any they had worn. Moccasin-style field shoes, soft-treaded and reinforced at the sole, wrapped close at the ankle for stealth and stability. Each pair was dyed black, storm-treated, and built for terrain both cruel and shifting.
Last came the satchels. Reinforced, rune-lined, with compartments for all that a fighter might carry: rations, water flasks, salve packs, flint and catchwool, rope, scroll tubes. No piece was forgotten. No item was misplaced.
The cohort stared, unmoving.
Many had fought and killed Dazhum just to pry a blade from their belt. Others had worn bloodied iron taken from unmarked graves. But never this. Never steel this pure. This precise. This offered.
Connach reached out, hands hesitant, and touched the haft of the Tidecut Spear. His fingers trembled.
"We used to kill for scraps," he whispered. "And even then, what we found was already broken."
Eorlas stood beside him, face unreadable.
"And now we're given what they would never have let us see."
Across the hall, others echoed the same awe. Not with words, but with silence. They accepted each piece slowly, reverently. As if afraid it might vanish if held too quickly. It was not pride that made them slow. It was respect.
Warden Chaghan watched, arms crossed.
"This is the beginning. If you live long enough to return to the Bastion, the Merit Hall will be waiting. Until then, wear what you are given. Carry it with weight. Fight like it was never meant to be yours."
He turned and walked out with the two Stormguard officers, the sound of his boots fading into the hush.
The cohort stood, weapons in hand, armored for the first time not in desperation but in intent.
No one laughed. No one boasted.
Steel had been given. Now they would have to prove they were worthy of it.
Twilight gathered above the yard like a lowered helm, the sky burnished and heavy. The cohort stood silent in formation, their new blacksteel still unfamiliar across their shoulders. The forge had tested them. The training had stripped them. And now roles would be named.
The training officer stepped forward. He carried no scroll this time. His voice carried across the stone like flint struck on steel.
"You've proven yourselves in the hall and the field. You've earned place not by name, but by action. From this day forward, you stand not as strays or remnants, but as a warband."
He let the words settle before continuing.
"The first to lead you will be Connach of Clann Durnach."
Heads turned. Connach stepped forward, silent, unwavering. He did not react with pride or protest, only with a steady nod, as though he had already borne the weight in silence long before it was spoken aloud.
The officer continued.
"He will name his second. That choice is his alone."
Connach turned, eyes sweeping the line. He passed by strength and speed, overlooked size and familiarity, and stopped at Aoan. The two locked eyes, a quiet understanding between them.
Aoan gave no reaction, but a flicker of breath left him, as if bracing for the role already felt.
The training officer gave no nod, no confirmation. The choice had been made.
"Scouts," he said next, "will be chosen by aptitude and affinity."
He named Eorlas first for his sharp eyes and steadiness under pressure. Then Tuarin, for his silence and shadow-bound movements. Firaen followed, youngest among them, but wind-touched and fleet. Urekh and Sira rounded out the last, both sharp in their own way, one with the eye for distance, the other for patterns others missed.
The remaining roles fell into place with the weight of ritual. Some were placed along the line for strength. Others behind the shieldwall for timing and command. Each was chosen for what they'd shown, not what they claimed.
The officer stepped back. No fanfare. No ceremony.
Only the shape of something forming. Not yet whole. Not yet proven. But ready to march.
The Moorfire Unit stood quiet, forged and formed.
Tomorrow, they would learn if they could endure what waited beyond the walls.