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“This test will be a battle royale, on the sands of Terosa.”

My mind raced. Terosa. I knew that planet—one of the five of the Pentaris sector, the fiercely independent human-controlled territories that bordered us.

“Activate,” said Callix, and our smart-watches glowed. Our bodies were bathed with green light. We were all clad in the same white linen pants, shirtless, not yet earning the robes of battle.

“Each watch is attuned to your voice. A strike on the watch is a death. Strike your own watch to end the drill, or say stop.”

He looked over our ranks, one by one. “Any questions?”

“It’s last man standing?” I asked, not because I was confused, but because I loved the sound of my own voice.

“No. Quite the opposite. Was I not clear enough, Doman? The drill ends by striking one’s own watch or saying stop.”

I blinked in confusion, my mind trying to piece it together. This was unlike any other training—when I realized, as the other boys started to look over at me, their slate-gray eyes simmering with pent-up anger.

This was not a drill with one winner.

It was a drill with a single loser.

Callix walked through the sands, then stated a command in his smart-watch, and the red sands of the arena shifted, growing thicker, replicating the terrain of Terosa.

“Begin!” he roared out, and I sprinted forward towards the weapons, the sand thickening around my feet, making me stumble. I braced my fall, and my hand sank into the thick sands, as if cement was clutching me down. I pulled up with all my might, trapped, looking up at the other boys.

They moved forward in strange, sliding movements, until they reached the piles of weapons, picking them up. I tasted panic for the first time, and overcame it, as my father Baldur had taught me, showing me how to control my breathing when plunged into an icy pool, showing me how to force down pain when he took a burning iron and pressed it against his own chest, searing himself while his face remained blank, then using a beam to heal the wound a second later. I was too scared to touch the fiery ember myself the first time. The second time I screamed, and the third, I cried, but did not make a sound.

I force my panicked mind to focus on my lessons. My mother had told me of the Pentaris cluster. I find the piece of information I was missing—of course! The thick, mineral sands harden and thicken with abrupt movements. I gently raised my hand from the sands, and slid myself towards the other boys…

But to my shock, none of them were fighting each other.

They all turned to me. The wall of them, hard, gray eyes, without mercy.

With long, sliding steps, they moved towards me, teeth bared, months of pent-up anger and envy flowing from them. I glanced down at my smart-watch. One word, and I could end the drill.

Then I raised my head, imperiously, mimicking my father, the Emperor Raegan when he heard his subjects, looking down on them as the first blows rained down.

I tried to cover my head, my body, but the blunted swords slammed down on me endlessly. I fought to control my pain, like I had been taught, not wanting to shame my fathers, but they beat me endlessly, without a sound, no roars of triumph. I looked up through my hands and saw no mercy, the boys converging on me like robots, each taking their turn, slamming the blades down and moving aside so that each would get his shot in.

They avoided my smart-watch. They let their blows hit me on my liver, the backs of my legs, my neck, blows that they had dreamed about for months. Fear spiked up in me as I writhed in agony, unable to defend myself, and a deeper, more terrifying emotion overwhelmed me.

Shame. I didn’t know how much longer I could take, and ending the drill would mark me forever as a coward. My right eye was a searing bolt of pain, and I could barely see out of it, and I couldn’t hold my hands over my head any longer, going limp in the sands, every second I withstood a victory, but finally, the whisper came out of me.

“Stop,” I moaned, hating myself, and my watch glowed, covering me with a red glow. The boys stopped, and stepped back, and only then did their robotic faces soften into laughs. Their mockery filled me.

“Trickery,” I gasped out, spitting up blood, my body covered in bruises.

“The victor writes the rules,” stated Callix without emotion.

“The next drill is the same. Reset,” he said, and my watch turned green once more. The fear filled me, until I couldn’t control it. I had withstood every moment I could, and another beating would have been too much. I tried to pull myself to my feet, but I was too weak and fell into the sands, a gasping, panting shell of a boy.

“There is one difference to the second drill. Instead of one loser, there will be three victors. Aurelians fight in triads.”

The boys exchanged looks, brows furrowing, and a few of them paired off, others in groups of threes, some alone, glancing left and right, sizing up their opponents.

From the sea of faces, one was different.

A boy, small for his age, who didn’t speak much. He stepped forward and extended his hand to me.

I was bleeding from a cut over my right eye, my head swimming, as I tried to focus on his face. Gallien. Not a threat—near the bottom of the ranks, but second to me in war strategy and mathematics. I’d looked at him as nothing in the month at Academy, a runt whose father should have ended his own weak line instead of extending his legacy in the cryo-chamber, but he was the only one who held his hand out, and I took it, pulled to my feet, swaying on my bruised legs. I felt a darker shame then, hating myself for looking down on him.