The Crown marches to conquer.
The blade dances to remember.
Between them walks the boy—
Out of rhythm, but not out of purpose.
---
"The Crown teaches men to move.
But it cannot teach them why."
– Found scratched beneath a barracks bunk in Blackmarch
The valley woke to rhythm.
Not birdsong. Not the babble of meltwater rivers.
But the sound of boots on stone.
One thousand feet, rising and falling in lockstep.
The sound of submission, hammered into marrow.
The sound of a kingdom breathing in war.
Ren stood at the edge of the training grounds, his travel cloak still stained from the mountain's ash-dusted trails. All around him, boys and men moved like notes in a march—a living song of obedience.
Left.
Right.
Step.
Step.
Turn.
Shout.
He did not move.
He listened.
The Barracks at Halden's Field was a jagged scar carved into the base of the valley. Wood and stone barracks crouched in rows like teeth, each building named for a lost battle. Flags rose and fell in the morning breeze—red and steel-grey, the colors of the Kingdom of Syr'khan, and above them, the glint of the Crown's Crest: twin fangs locked in a ring of fire.
A rhythm thrummed through the ground. Ren could feel it beneath his boots.
It wasn't natural.
It was forced—regulated.
As though some distant hand conducted the heartbeat of the entire camp.
Around him, new conscripts wore identical tunics, dull brown belts, and blades too clean to matter. Their faces blurred together: uncertain, afraid, eager, resigned.
Ren stood apart. His clothes were plain, his blade broken.
But his hum was intact.
Soft.
Steady.
Unwelcome.
The first to approach him was a boy a few years older, tall with ash-blonde hair and a swagger borrowed from someone he admired. A ceremonial dagger was strapped upside-down on his back—not standard issue. His eyes gleamed with calculated mirth.
"You don't look like rhythm, mountain boy."
Ren said nothing.
"You hear it yet? That thrum beneath your heels? They say once you hear it, it never leaves. The Crown plants it in your blood like a drum."
Ren tilted his head.
"And what happens when the song turns sour?"
The boy blinked. Then smiled wider.
"Name's Korrin. I like you."
They were lined up by dusk.
The drillmaster was a tower of a man—built like a fallen tree, arms like iron cables, his eyes sharp as flint. His name was Sarn Velle, though none dared use it.
"You will not speak your old names in these grounds. You are now sons of Syr'khan. Until the Crown names you worthy, you are no one. You move when told. You sleep when allowed. You bleed in rhythm. If you can't, you die."
Silence.
Even the wind paused to listen.
"Form lines. Four across. Step when I say. Left foot first. Don't fail the rhythm."
The Crown's rhythm began.
Step. Step. Pause. Turn. Step. Step.
Ren felt it crawling into his joints.
His body resisted.
His foot twitched too early. His pivot lagged a breath too long. Not enough to draw punishment—but enough for eyes to narrow.
This is not your rhythm, the voice inside him whispered.
He knew.
He heard a different one.
Older. Wilder. Unwritten.
That night, in the shared sleeping quarters, Ren lay awake staring at the rafters.
The Crown's rhythm still hummed in the floorboards. But he did not hum with it.
He hummed against it.
And somewhere outside, he swore he heard his broken blade shift within its wrappings.
The next morning brought the first real test.
Blade drills.
The barracks armory handed out steel longswords—identical, dull-edged, heavy in hand. They had no rhythm. They were tools, meant to shape soldiers into limbs of the Crown.
Ren hated them.
"You'll begin with the Form of the Falcon," barked Drillmaster Sarn. "Five-point movement. Shoulder to flank. Turn and sweep. Again. Rhythm is king. Again."
One hundred boys swung their blades in perfect time.
Ren moved… wrong.
Too loose. Too quiet.
Too alive.
Sarn noticed.
"You! Mountain runt. Step forward."
Ren obeyed.
"Where'd you learn that coward's form? You dancing or fighting?"
"Both."
A breathless silence.
Sarn stepped forward. Raised his practice sword.
"Then dance out of this."
The strike came hard and high.
Ren didn't block.
He moved.
Side step. Pivot. Drop. Slide.
The blade hissed above his ear.
He twisted beneath, rose, and tapped Sarn's ribs with the hilt of his own.
The entire yard froze.
Sarn stared at him—stone-faced.
"That wasn't rhythm," he growled.
"No," Ren said. "It was mine."
That night, Sarn didn't punish him.
He simply assigned him to isolation—the North Barracks, a rotting shed near the woods, where only the rejects and wild ones slept. Where rhythm went to die.
Ren didn't mind.
He liked the silence.
And in that silence, for the first time in days, he drew his broken blade again.
Sat cross-legged.
Closed his eyes.
And hummed.
Not loudly. Not proudly.
Just enough for the blade to remember.
It vibrated.
Faint.
But there.
The rhythm of the Crown taught boys to march.
But Ren's rhythm reminded steel to sing.
And that…
was enough.