The moment the ceremony ended, the weight of reality slammed down on Kael like a collapsing star. His tablet buzzed sharply with the assignment—Class 1-A. He walked through the endless steel corridors of Stellar Academy, each step echoing louder in his mind than the last. The Combat Wing awaited.
Inside the classroom, the air was thick with anticipation and fear. Around him, faces of fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds flickered with nervous energy. The door slammed open, and Instructor Voss entered with the cold authority of a warship's captain. His cybernetic eye gleamed under the harsh lights.
"I am your commanding officer," Voss said, voice like gravel. "You will obey my orders without question. Understand?"
"Yes, Sire!" came the chorus.
No one doubted the severity behind those words.
From the first moment outside, the training tore into them like a relentless storm. Voss wasted no time. Without rest, they were forced into grueling runs through harsh simulation grounds—ten kilometers with gravity enhanced beyond Earth's, across unforgiving terrain designed to crush the weak. The air felt thinner with every breath, muscles screamed, and lungs burned, but Kael pushed through. Around him, cadets collapsed, vomited, or simply faded into silence. Only the strongest kept pace.
Days blurred into endless drills. Dawn came too soon and night offered no reprieve. They woke before the station's artificial sun rose to endure five hundred push-ups in the simulated Martian atmosphere, followed by sprinting under turbulent zero-gravity winds and scaling towering obstacle courses designed to mimic the raging storms of Titan. Every inch of skin burned with exhaustion, every joint protested, and every step threatened collapse. But retreat was not an option.
Voss's voice cut through the exhaustion like a blade. "Pain is weakness leaving the body. If you quit, you die."
When cadets stumbled or faltered, they were dragged back by unseen mechanisms, injected with stimulants, and forced onward. Rest was a dream, food a memory. Kael learned the rhythm of suffering, the cadence of endurance.
After weeks of breaking bodies, the mind became the next battlefield. Endless hours of tactical drills assaulted their senses. War machines, alien biology, fleet commands—they had to absorb it all, recall every detail as if their lives depended on it. Voss patrolled the room, and any hesitation was met with a sharp strike of his cane or a cold glare that could freeze the heart.
Kael's focus sharpened. He memorized weapon schematics and ship protocols, outpacing many who had trained longer. Still, Voss said nothing. No praise, no relief.
Then came the combat simulations. Teams were formed—strangers thrown together in forced brotherhood. Kael led quietly, directing coordinated strikes in virtual battlefields fraught with laser fire and unseen enemies. The suits responded to every hit with brutal feedback, and the threat of elimination loomed constantly. His team fought desperately, surviving ambushes and winning skirmishes, but Voss's steely gaze never softened.
The training shifted again. Zero-gravity combat outside the station, in the unforgiving silence of space itself. Maneuvering through airlocks, reloading weapons without gravity, keeping steady under pressure—every mistake could mean death. Cadets fell injured, bruised by unforgiving steel walls and relentless exercises, but Kael adapted, learned, grew.
Then came the unspoken test—Death Week. No warnings. No instructions. Lights went out. Food disappeared. The cadets were thrust into total darkness and relentless simulated attacks, gas traps, and deadly puzzles. Three quit, one broke and was hospitalized. Kael crawled through it all, driven by something fierce and unyielding.
At the end of the first month—no, the first year—the class was no longer twenty hopefuls but a dozen hardened survivors. Kael was among them, changed, sharpened into something far beyond the boy who had arrived.
Voss, who had spoken so little, finally looked at them all. For the first time, he acknowledged their survival—not with words of kindness, but with a simple, cold truth: "You're not worms anymore."
Kael lay on his bunk that night, muscles burning, sweat cooling on his skin, pride quietly simmering beneath the exhaustion. He was ready for whatever came next.