Ashen's boots clicked against polished floors as he stepped into the stream of students heading in the same direction. Dozens of uniforms brushed past him, chatter filling the air—laughter, groans about simulations.
But the walls stole the attention of everyone walking through.
On either side of the corridor, thick panes of reinforced glass framed the endless sea.
The waters of the Atlantic pressed in on all directions, a massive wall of shifting blue threaded with shafts of sunlight filtering down from far above.
Shadows drifted across the glass—schools of silvery fish moving in coordinated arcs.
Occasionally, larger silhouettes passed.
Some were familiar—whales, streamlined and massive, their songs faintly vibrating the structure.
Others were alien additions, engineered guardians released by humanity to patrol the ocean around their Academy—serpentine machines whose metal fins sliced through the water like knives.
The Academy had been built here, deep below the ocean's surface, as both protection and symbol.
Humanity's cradle now stood submerged, a fortress hidden beneath pressure and silence.
It was a reminder that survival sometimes required adaptation.
Ashen glanced once at the marine world outside the glass, then let his eyes drift back to the crowd ahead, he didn't linger.
Beauty was wasted on him, he had learned not to reach for things that could not last.
The flow of cadets carried him onward until the corridor opened wide.
The assembly hall loomed before him, vast and cathedral-like.
Its ceilings arched high, ribbed with glowing conduits that illuminated the chamber in cold white light.
Tiered rows stretched back in every direction, enough to seat tens of thousands. At the far end rose the stage, simple yet commanding, a black platform beneath banners marked with Earth's emblem: the globe wrapped in silver wings.
Ashen stepped inside.
The hall was nearly empty, only scattered figures taking seats this early.
The assembly didn't start for another hour.
Silence hung heavy, broken only by the echo of footsteps and the mechanical hum of ventilation.
Ashen preferred it this way, crowds usually pressed in on him, suffocating with their noise and heat.
He slipped into a seat in the far corner, where shadows collected and hid his body. His back was to the wall, his eyes on the stage.
Minutes slowly passed by as everyone waited while chatting with their companions.
The hall began to fill.
First in clusters, then in waves, cadets streamed in.
The noise swelled—voices overlapping, uniforms rustling, boots clattering, laughter bouncing off steel walls.
The scent of sweat and oil followed them. From his vantage, Ashen watched the tide of bodies rise higher and higher until the chamber brimmed with thousands.
There where about ten thousand cadets in the Academy, but only a hundred get selected every year.
It was the maximum allowance given by the Dominion.
To Earth, that number was salvation—more bodies meant more chances of survival.
To other races, it was laughable.
Why waste so many lives when ten, or even twenty, sufficed? The stronger races needed only a handful of champions to carve their names into the Dominion's rankings.
For Earth, numbers had been their only weapon, and still, they had never once risen from the bottom.
Ashen leaned back into his seat, expression unreadable.
The roar of conversation broke suddenly when a single figure walked onto the stage.
Silence fell like a curtain.
The man was old by soldier's measure—fifty, maybe more. His hair was iron-gray, cropped close, his jaw square and scarred. He wore a uniform that clung like a second skin, black with silver trim, shoulders bearing the insignia of rank. His steps were steady, unhurried, yet each one carried the weight of command.
Feron of the Four.
The name rippled across the hall in whispers, then stilled.
Everyone knew who he was.
Everyone had been told his story, again and again, until it became legend. He was one of the first hundred. The unlucky souls randomly chosen when Earth had been forced into its first Game.
They had been untrained, unprepared, little more than sacrifices thrown into an alien hell.
Ninety-six had never returned.
Four had.
Feron was one of them.
He stopped at center stage and let his gaze sweep over the crowd.
His eyes were sharp, carrying the weight of decades, but there was something softer beneath them—a quiet warmth, the kind only an elder who had seen too much could possess.
No microphone was needed, his voice carried, deep and measured, filling every corner of the hall.
"As we all know," he began, "some of our brothers, sisters, and friends will be departing in a week to represent our planet in the Dominion Games."
The words hung heavy, sinking into silence.
"I still remember," Feron continued, pacing slowly, hands clasped behind his back, "the first time Earth was called. Ten years ago, we were arrogant. We believed our weapons, our numbers, our pride would see us through. We thought ourselves conquerors. After all, had we not dominated our own world? Had we not bent nature, built empires, crossed oceans, split the atom?"
He paused, his gaze distant, as if replaying memories no one else could see.
"We believed that was enough. That our strength, our technology, our will alone would carry us. But the Dominion Games do not measure strength the way we did. They measure survival. Adaptation. Willingness to become something more than what you are."
He stopped, turning to face the cadets in the front row.
"Ninety-six of us died in that first Game. Only four returned. I was one of them. And I can tell you this…" His voice grew sharper, cutting through the air. "We were not chosen because we were the strongest. Nor because we were the bravest. We survived because we refused to surrender. Because even as the abyss swallowed us, we kept clawing upward. And when there was no path, we carved one."
Murmurs rippled through the hall. Cadets straightened in their seats.
Feron's gaze swept to the upper tiers. "For ten years, humanity has been mocked. We are the weak ones. The desperate ones. The ones who send a hundred bodies to barely scrape by where others send ten and claim victory. But we are still here."
He raised a scarred hand, voice rising like a drumbeat.
"We are still fighting."
The silence that followed was heavier than before.
Feron's eyes softened, his words slowing. "Some of you will leave soon. You will walk into worlds that defy reason. You will face creatures that hunger for your flesh, landscapes that twist to kill you, enemies who see you as nothing more than insects to be crushed. And you will be afraid."
He let the truth settle in.
"That fear is not weakness. That fear is proof that you are alive. And as long as you are alive, you can fight. As long as you can fight, you can endure. And as long as one of us endures…" His voice dropped, quiet yet thunderous, "…Earth endures."
The hall erupted into applause.
Cadets shouted, clapped, stomped.
The sound rose like a storm, rattling the steel walls, shaking the very air.
Pride, fear, and determination mingled in a single roar.
Ashen sat still, watching from his corner.
The fire in Feron's words did not stir him as it did the others.
He had heard speeches before.
He had seen cadets cheer, seen the light in their eyes flare only to be extinguished when reality crushed them every year.
Still, he listened.
Because beneath the pride and bravado, Feron spoke one truth Ashen understood better than most: survival was all that mattered.
And survival was the one thing Ashen knew he could do.