For the next three weeks, I lived in the deep underbelly of the Banner compound, a place built to house secrets and make monsters. Each day was the same: wake at six, eat something approximating breakfast, and descend into the cellars where the White Banner kept their training rooms. After what I'd done to the first, I was not allowed back in it. Uncle Wolf—who'd been placed on semi-permanent 'Kaesor babysitting detail', whether he liked it or not—had personally overseen the refurbishment, and when he escorted me to the new room, he made a show of running a hand along the reinforced wall and giving me a look.

  “Try not to destroy this one before lunch, kid,” he said, as if he expected me to blow it up just by looking too hard.

  "Can't make any promises," I told him. Then he shut the door and left me alone, just me and the endless, echoing expanse of reinforced materials.

  The new room was bigger, and the Banner had gone the extra mile: every six feet, another line of mana-absorbent tile, and in the corners, pressure sensors wired to kill the lights if anything got out of hand. I liked it better this way. It felt honest, like they were admitting I might break the toys if they weren’t careful.

  The first week was about control. [Edge Glare] wasn’t just a spell; it was a new appendage, a limb I’d never learned to move, and the System wanted me to work it until it was as natural as breathing. The goal: reduce the mana cost, increase the focus, and stop relying on verbal commands.

  I started simple. Six training dummies, evenly spaced, all made from the high-density ceramic composite they used for crowd-control barriers. My first attempt was a joke: the spell left a ribbon of vapour in the air, too wide and too shallow, and the only damage it did was crack the dummy's chestplate. Mana cost: around twelve percent. An expensive whiff. Unacceptable.

  The way I'd used it in the dungeon was the opposite problem: all power and not enough control. That was why I was training in the first place.

  I set up again and dialled down the focus, imagining the arc thinner, tighter. This time, the blast shaved a curl of ceramic off the dummy's left arm, leaving a long, smooth divot. Progress, but nowhere near good enough.

  The trick was the input. The more I tried to force the mana, the worse it got. It was like training a muscle you didn’t know you had: if you flexed the whole body, nothing happened; but if you zeroed in, found the exact nerve, it became effortless. Or so the book claimed. I had my doubts about the book.

  On the tenth run, I managed to channel a razor-thin blade of force through both dummies, slicing them at the same height, one after another. The pressure wave was barely audible, and the mana drain was down to six percent. I allowed myself a small, grim smile.

  “Better,” I muttered. “Still dogshit, but better.”

  That was how it went. The rest of the week was more of the same: stand in front of the line, dial up the intensity, and push until the limits of my skill fell away. I made a game of it—first to crack, me or the dummy—and after a few days, it became clear the dummies were going to need more reinforcements.

  I only broke the wall once. The alarm didn’t even sound, since the spell was so perfectly collimated that it passed through the dummy, the wall, and a foot of concrete beyond, leaving a neat, glassy groove in the training corridor. I spent the next two hours patching it with the provided repair kit, whistling to myself. They could deduct it from my pay.

  The second week was harder. Uncle Wolf brought in Sean, and a few days later, Vicky. “Family therapy,” he called it, but I knew what he really wanted. The Banner wanted to see if I could train others, or if my methods were just for me.

  Sean had recovered from his last scrape, and he was back to full bastard form. He watched me blast a row of dummies into confetti, then set his jaw and grabbed the nearest one.

  "Let me try," he said, and before I could warn him, he was pouring mana through his arms like a firehose. The effect was immediate: the dummy shattered, Sean's hands went numb, and he collapsed to the floor clutching at his forearms. Trying to manipulate mana directly without any of the Skills from the System relating to it was rough. Something my fool of a brother might have known if he wasn't so impatient.

  “You know there’s a learning curve, right?” I asked, barely able to keep from laughing.

  "Eat shit," he said, grinning through the pain. "You didn't exactly come out of the womb knowing how to do this either."

  He was right, but I’d never admit it.

  Vicky was another matter. She hovered at the entrance, arms crossed, refusing to so much as touch the practice dummies. Her eyes darted to the cracks in the wall, the blackened spots where errant spells had melted the ceramic. When I asked if she wanted to try, she just shook her head.

  “Not ready for combat training,” she said. “I’m more of a support class.”

  She didn’t say it like an apology, but she didn’t sound proud of it either.

  Uncle Wolf split the difference. He set up scenarios where Sean had to defend Vicky, or where I had to disable a target without causing collateral damage. Each round was like a family game night, except with more violence and less passive aggression. We rotated roles, swapped strategies, and occasionally screamed at each other when the drills got too real.

  That was the point: to get better, you had to want it enough to bleed. I had learned that lesson the hard way, and I wasn’t about to let my siblings off easy. They both surprised me. Sean, for all his hotheadedness, picked up the basics fast. By the end of the week, he was landing hits on me in sparring matches, and I could see the edge of the old rivalry in his eyes.

  Vicky was slower, but she was stubborn. She made a game of not being where the attack landed, of using her support abilities to throw me off balance. She never struck back, but by day four, she was lasting twice as long in every scenario.

  I loved them for it, even if I’d never say so out loud.

  The best part, though, was the dinners. Every night, after we’d finished pounding each other into the dirt, Uncle Wolf would herd us into the staff cafeteria, and we’d eat whatever was left on the buffet line. It was a routine I hadn’t realized I missed until we started doing it again.

  The food was awful. Some days it was all rehydrated, gray slabs of protein with a side of steamed carrots. Other days, it was some indistinguishable casserole and a salad that tasted like regret. But the company made up for it.

  Sean talked the most, always with his mouth full. “You ever think,” he said, stabbing a fork at me, “that maybe you’re going too hard on the training? You could chill, just a little. Maybe spend a day above ground.”

  “I relax just fine,” I said. “You just don’t notice because I don’t do it like a lunatic.”

  He snorted. “You bench press air conditioners for fun, man. That’s not relaxation.”

  Vicky hid her smile behind a glass of water. “He’s right, you know. The Banner’s already got you pegged. You don’t have to break yourself proving it every day.”

  I let that sit for a moment, picking at the dry chicken on my plate. “I’m not doing it for them,” I said finally. “I’m doing it because I need to see how far it goes.”

  Uncle Wolf nodded. “That’s the trick, isn’t it? Not letting them set your limits.”

  Sean leaned back in his chair. “Well, if you ever get bored, you can always come be my sparring partner. I need someone who can take a punch.”

  “You sure about that? Don’t forget I’ve been tempering my stats down to your level, little brother.” I pointed out. “Last time you tried, you didn’t walk right for a week.”

  He grinned, wide and wolfish. “That’s just because you got lucky.”

  I liked these dinners. They reminded me what it was like to be part of something, to have people who cared if you lived or died. Even if they showed it by threatening to put you in a headlock, or by dissecting your every move like a bug under a microscope.

  The third week was when things got weird.

  Edge Glare had plateaued; I was down to four percent mana per use, and I could shave the wings off a fly at ten meters if I concentrated. The other spells, though, were another story. That was something else I learned through my experimenting. Skills and Spells were very different things, and while I could adapt most Spells to work through [Fell Gaze], it seemed Skills were a no-go. Still, I added several new Spells to my roster of magical effects.

  The more I practiced, the more the Banner staff avoided me. Even Uncle Wolf stopped dropping by as often, and when he did, he stayed on the far side of the glass, arms folded, just watching.

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  On the twentieth day, I had a breakthrough. I was practicing with a new batch of dummies, these ones reinforced with an alloy skeleton and a layer of impact gel under the armour. I lined them up, dialled Edge Glare to the highest compression I could achieve, and cut through all six in a single pass. The slice was so clean, the dummies just stood there, not realizing they'd been bisected until I nudged one with my hand and it toppled over.

  I felt the mana burn, but it was nothing like before. Just a slight ache behind the eyes, a gentle drain instead of the hollowing exhaustion I used to get. It felt right, like something I’d be able to fire off a few dozen times before it became an issue.

  I stood there a long moment, just looking at the aftermath. The dummies, the wall, the room—all reduced to the bare essentials. No waste, no extra motion. That was what I wanted: to be efficient, to be perfect, to be more than the sum of what the Banner expected.

  Uncle Wolf appeared at the door, watching through the glass.

  “Lunch,” he mouthed, tapping his watch.

  I nodded, wiped the sweat off my brow, and followed him up the stairs.

  —-

  The cafeteria was more crowded than usual, a ripple of Banner staff and off-duty Rankers queued up for the noon rush. I spotted Sean at the far table, already holding court with a trio of junior team leads. Vicky was nowhere to be seen, but I figured she’d show up when she felt like it.

  Uncle Wolf grabbed a tray, loading it with two sandwiches and a small mountain of chips. “You ever going to teach me that eye trick?” he asked, gesturing to my face.

  "Wouldn't help you," I said. "You're too old to learn new Skills."

  He grinned, wolfish and wide. “Maybe. Or maybe I just need the right teacher.”

  "It's not that simple. Nothing ever is anymore. Not with the System involved."

  We sat in the corner, just the two of us. It was quieter here, and I could actually hear myself think. Uncle Wolf chewed through his sandwich like it was the first food he’d seen in weeks, then pointed the crust at me.

  "You're doing well, you know."

  I shrugged. “Still a long way to go.”

  "That's the way it's supposed to be. If it were easy, everyone would do it."

  He looked at me, really looked, in that way only old soldiers and parents can. "You've got the potential to change everything, kid, and I think you know that." He rose from the table, "You just have to keep putting in the work."

  I glanced across the room, watching Sean hold court, his hands flying as he retold some story about his last mission. The other Rankers laughed, nodding, hanging on every word. For a moment, I felt a sharp, unexpected pride. He was making his own way.

  Maybe we weren’t so different, after all.

  I finished my meal, went back to my room, and spent the next hour staring at the ceiling, wondering how much more I could change before I stopped being myself.

  But I already knew in the end it didn't matter. I would keep going until there was nothing left to break. And when the System finally ran out of tests, I'd still be there, waiting for the next one.

  I slept like the dead.

  The next morning, I woke up and started again.

  ——-

  It was the kind of dawn that belonged only to the very desperate, or to those who didn't have the choice of sleeping in. Heavy mist clung to the ground, making the world soft around the edges, every tree trunk and headstone bleeding out into the next. Even the crows kept their silence, perched in the boughs above the little cemetery on the city's edge.

  The Banner didn't stand on tradition, but even they couldn't say no to a full honours funeral. Not for a Ranger who'd made it as far as Matt Thorne had, who'd left enough of himself in enough dungeons to make a ledger of lives saved and pain spared that would fill at least a few shelves in a library.

  There weren't many of us. Victor's team stood in black uniforms by the grave's edge, hands folded behind their backs, eyes fixed on the empty casket. Sofia's hair was still stained with frost at the tips, a remnant of her own way of mourning. She kept looking to her left, as if waiting for Matt to nudge her with a joke or a bad pun. The space stayed empty.

  Dave didn’t wear his uniform. He’d come in a cheap black suit and looked even more uncomfortable than usual, hands wrestling with the cuffs, tie off-center. He didn’t speak, not once, but every minute or so his lips moved as if working through the words of a prayer he couldn’t quite get out.

  A few others from the Banner were scattered at the periphery. They kept their distance, as if proximity might drag them down too. David Giffle and Uncle Wolf stood together at the far end, heads bowed. The Blue Bloods hadn’t bothered to show; Matt hadn’t been from a legacy family, and dead men didn’t earn anyone new seats at the council table.

  I stayed near the back, next to a row of old stones so crusted with moss their names had gone smooth and featureless. It felt right to let the ones who’d known Matt best get the first say.

  The service was short. A priest with a voice like gravel read the bare minimum of the liturgy, then stepped back to let Victor speak. There was no pulpit, just the raw morning and the sodden grass, but when Victor began, the words filled the silence anyway.

  "Matthew Thorne was a Ranger. He didn't come from much, but he gave everything he had to the Banner. He was never the fastest or the strongest, but nobody on earth knew the woods like he did. He could tell you where the wind would go an hour before it started moving. He kept us safe every time we went in. He watched the sky so we could watch the ground."

  Victor paused, shoulders set, voice not cracking but held taut as wire.

  “He was a pain in the ass. He told the worst stories, and he laughed at his own jokes. He cared about us, even when he pretended not to. He saved my life more times than I can count. I’d give anything to owe him one more.”

  The mist thickened, blurring out the Banner patch sewn on the arms of every uniform.

  Victor’s gaze flicked over his shoulder, catching me in the back row. “We didn’t get him back,” he said, softer now. “But I want everyone to know we didn’t stop looking. We’ll never stop.”

  The priest closed with a few words about eternal light and rest. The empty casket dropped into the ground with a dull, wet thud, and a pair of staffers began shovelling dirt in, their faces hidden behind plain black masks. Funerals for Rankers had to be practical, after all. Leave the rituals to the ones who believed in them.

  I kept my eyes on the grave until the last shovelful fell, the sound dull and final. The chill seeped up through my shoes, and I realized I’d been grinding my jaw so hard my teeth ached. I felt nothing like peace. Only guilt, and a bright, angry edge of need. If I’d been a little faster, a little smarter, maybe he wouldn’t be missing right now.

  The others lingered for a while, talking in low voices, not really listening to each other. Sofia wandered over to the casket, dropping a battered arrow fletching onto the mound. Dave stood beside her, silent, then walked away without a word.

  Victor approached me last, boots crunching on the frost-bitten grass.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t have missed it,” I said. My voice sounded rough. “You holding up?”

  He gave a tiny shrug. “We keep going. Don’t have any other options.”

  I nodded, staring at the mound. “I’m sorry I didn’t get there in time.”

  Victor shook his head. “Not your fault. None of us saw it coming. I read your report—whatever that thing was, it wasn’t normal dungeon spawn. Matt knew the risks better than anyone.”

  “Doesn’t help,” I said.

  “No,” Victor agreed. “It doesn’t. But we’re going to find out what did this. For him.”

  He clapped a hand on my shoulder, heavy and solid. “Take care of your own, Aiden. That’s all that matters.”

  He moved off, leaving me alone with the fresh dirt and the echo of his words.

  The mist had lifted a little. I looked around at the faces—none of them smiling, all of them hard—and felt the anger set into something colder. A promise, maybe, or just a refusal to let go.

  We’d never stop looking.

  ——-

  The White Banner didn't do subtle, at least not when it came to internal operations. The Toronto compound's main briefing room looked like it belonged in a warship: brushed steel walls, black glass table, a projection array that could display a full hologram of the planet and light the whole room in eerie blue if you left it running. They said the National Director used it to terrify visiting dignitaries. I suspected it was just more efficient to bully people with a planet-sized graphic than with words. That was, after all, why this meeting was in the city, rather than at the compound, which I practically lived out of these last few weeks.

  David Giffle stood at the head of the table, one hand braced on a tablet, the other picking absently at the corner of a printout. His suit was as sharp as ever, but I could see the fatigue behind his eyes—the look of a man who’d been getting four hours a night and mainlining black coffee between meetings. Uncle Wolf sat a few seats down, arms folded, a presence so solid he made the table look fragile. There was no one else in the room; the three of us made a quorum.

  The projection array spun to life as I entered, throwing a relief map of northern Canada over the black glass. The surface shimmered with hundreds of markers—green for Banner assets, yellow for known dungeon sites, and red for something new. There were red marks overlapping dozens of the yellow..

  Giffle didn’t waste time. “Thanks for coming on short notice, Aiden. Please sit.”

  I did, letting my hand hover over the surface as I absorbed the display. The map had been annotated with a half-dozen flagged sites, most of them scattered along the border of the far north, places I’d only ever heard about in passing: isolated mining towns, research outposts, whole stretches of tundra with nothing but a single outpost and the occasional power line.

  He zoomed in on the largest red cluster, near the edge of a shallow arctic river.

  “We’re seeing increased activity here,” he said. “The pattern doesn’t match any dungeon we’ve seen—there’s too much cross-traffic, too many open portals, and no corresponding spikes in mana. Our analysts think someone’s moving resources through the area, but we haven’t found the bottleneck.”

  He paused, letting me process it. I’d never seen the map this busy. “What’s the source?”

  Giffle double-tapped a point on the display. The Banner logo faded out, replaced by a stencilled sigil: the Vish. It was all claws and spirals, a shape that made your eye twitch if you stared too long.

  “Shit,” I said, not bothering to hide the disgust. “They’re working on something up there.”

  Uncle Wolf grunted. “Bold, but not stupid. The Vish don’t move in the open unless they think they have cover. Somebody’s running interference for them.”

  I clenched my hands into fists, felt the fingernails bite into my palm. The Vish had been at the edges of my story since the time Sean nearly died before I’d taken him to be initiated, and now they were moving on the board like they owned it. I wanted to go after them. I wanted it more than I could say.

  Giffle watched me with a measured gaze. “You want to go north,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” I replied, jaw tight. “You’re going to send me?”

  Uncle Wolf uncrossed his arms and leaned forward. “Not yet. Not until we know what’s really going on. Rushing in blind, that’s how we lose more people. We’re getting reports from teams up there—distortions, missing assets.”

  I flexed my fingers, drummed them on the edge of the table. “I can handle it.”

  Giffle gave a tiny nod. “We know. That’s why we’re not rushing this. We’re putting a surveillance net over the whole sector. We want to send you when we can catch them in something big.”

  He spun the map again, showing the projected path of the red markers as they branched into the deep north. It wasn’t just one incursion; it was a campaign, slow but deliberate.

  “We aren’t sure what they’re doing up there,” Giffle said. “But we think it might have something to do with the surge of dungeons we’ve been seeing in the surrounding areas.”

  I stared at the red line, imagining it as a live thing, a rootworm creeping into the world’s frozen marrow. The anger was still there, but it had become something sharp, clean.

  Uncle Wolf put a hand on my shoulder, steady as a tree trunk. "You'll get your shot," he said, low and certain. "But you need to let us manage the politics first. These are the deep waters, kid."

  I nodded. “Fine, I’ll wait.” The tension slowly seeped out of me.

  Giffle powered down the map, the room falling back into grayscale shadow.

  “You’ll be on standby,” he said. “Go back to training. Spend time with your family. Prepare. When the call comes, you’ll likely be our first in.”

  He dismissed us with a flick of his hand, already lost in the next series of data streams. Uncle Wolf lingered by the door as I got up to leave.

  “You good, kid?” he asked.

  "Good as I can be, it's been a rough few months since I got back."

  "And we don't foresee it slowing down." Wolf said in a contemplative tone, "Better rest while you can, Kid. There are a lot of people looking at you, and not all of them are as friendly as David."

  "I figured as much, Uncle." I grinned. "Whatever happens, happens. I'll deal with it when it gets here."

  I left the office building of the Banner, glancing up at the sunshine. It felt good on my skin, not like that fake sunlight from the Soul-Sheer. It was a good reminder that I was home, even if home had ended up different from what I remembered.