The barracks were quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that offered rest or peace—but the thick, smothering stillness that came after too many screams, too many names whispered into dust. The air hummed with low mechanical breath—recyclers purring, armor plating shifting against reinforced walls, weapons disassembled and cleaned by reflex.
Five Warmachines remained within. Six, if you counted the shadow that lingered behind every thought—Maverick, sealed in his own world down the corridor, as unreachable as the stars.
Mitus sat cross-legged, helmet off, wiping the bloodstains from his chestplate with a patch of sacred cloth. His face was too young for the scars it bore, too tired for the fire still in his eyes. Across from him, Fitus leaned against a pillar, one leg braced up, arms folded, the soft hiss of servos accompanying every shift in his posture.
"You ever think about what would've happened if he hadn't dropped when he did?" Mitus asked. His voice was low. Meant to be private. It wasn't.
Fitus scoffed. "We'd be marrow in the teeth of those canyon bastards. What kind of question is that?"
"I'm just saying," Mitus continued, undeterred, "we were seconds from being torn apart. That last beast… I watched its shadow cover Relen's body before Maverick came down like the judgment of Terra."
A silence fell over the room at the mention of Relen. The name hung like smoke. One of their own—fallen before salvation arrived. Too soon for glory, too late for survival.
Across the room, a figure rose. Candren. Quiet. Wide-shouldered. The slowest to speak and the last to rush. His armor bore no decoration—just scrapes and black marks like a ledger of violence.
"I trained with Relen," Candren said, his voice deep and smooth like old iron. "He didn't scream when they dragged him. I heard everything else. But not his voice."
Mitus looked up. "You saw it?"
Candren nodded once. "I was pinned. Couldn't move. I saw Relen disappear under their claws. Then… nothing."
Another voice broke in—gravelly, cold. Riven. He sat atop an overturned munitions crate, knife in hand, sharpening it despite the blade already gleaming.
"They didn't kill him clean. I saw what they did. Pulled him apart like meat caught in a turbine. It wasn't fast."
Fitus' jaw tightened. "Then why speak it?"
"Because it happened," Riven growled, not looking up. "We pretend silence honors the dead, but all it does is forget them."
The room flinched at that—not physically, but in soul.
From the far end of the barracks, Valkar stirred. His massive frame rose from a kneeling position near the wall where he'd been in silent thought. He approached slowly, the weight of decades and memory evident in every heavy step.
"Words can be weapons," Valkar said. "Used poorly, they wound us. Used right… they honor what's left of us."
He looked between Riven and Mitus.
"I fought with Relen too. He was green when they first dropped him in the ash pits of Norr." A faint smile crossed his scarred mouth. "Kid never blinked at the firestorms. Said they reminded him of home."
Fitus grunted. "He wasn't ready."
"No one was," Candren replied flatly. "That's why we keep dying."
A heavy silence returned. Not a passive one. One that leaned on them—on shoulders already bowed with weight. The kind of silence that demanded someone crack.
Mitus did.
"Do you think Maverick feels it?" he asked, almost to himself. "The guilt? He landed seconds after Relen—"
"Stop," Fitus snapped.
Mitus blinked.
"He did what no one else could. He made sure we lived. You think that was luck? That was him. We fail, he doesn't."
"He's not a god," Riven muttered. "He bleeds. He breaks. Same as us."
Fitus stepped forward. "No. He doesn't. That's why he's him and we're us. Don't put your weakness on his back."
That got Valkar's attention.
"Enough," the veteran said, raising one armored hand. "We are all forged in the same fire. Some burn hotter, yes. But the flame belongs to all of us."
Candren crossed his arms. "Then tell me this—how many more do we lose before they stop sending us to die without reason? Xorta was no mission. That was a tomb."
Even Valkar had no answer for that.
Riven finally stood, slamming his blade into its sheath. "I asked once why we follow orders from ghosts in thrones. Got twenty lashes and a month in stasis for it."
"Did it change your mind?" Mitus asked quietly.
Riven looked at him, deadpan. "Did it change yours?"
⸻
They stood there, Warmachines who had once been men.
Some still were.
Some weren't sure.
And somewhere behind sealed metal doors, Maverick remained silent.
He hadn't spoken since the war-table.
Not even to himself.
Not yet.
___________________________________
The barracks dimmed to night-cycle, but no one slept.
These weren't men who needed rest. Not in the way mortals did. Their bodies could endure weeks without it, fueled by chemical stabilization, micro-repairs, and blood that knew nothing but war. But this was something else. This was the kind of insomnia that came when your soul refused to settle.
Mitus sat alone now, shoulders hunched, arms braced against his knees. His armor—scratched and still blood-streaked—creaked faintly as it moved with his breathing. He stared into the distance, the same thousand-yard void that had swallowed every Warmachine since the end of their last campaign.
Across from him, Riven lay reclined against the bulkhead, his gauntlets clasped across his chest like a corpse preparing for burial.
"You knew Relen best," Mitus said quietly, eyes still unfocused.
Riven opened one eye. Said nothing.
"I mean—before all of this. Before the canyon. I didn't know he had anyone that close. Not like that."
Riven sat up slowly. His gaze wasn't harsh. It was tired.
"Relen didn't talk much. He was like me in that way. But he never shut up about Terros Station. That place was everything to him. Said it was the only place in the galaxy where the sky looked clean. Blue, he called it."
"That's where he was born?" Mitus asked.
Riven nodded. "Born. Drafted. Modified. Shipped. He'd never been anywhere else."
Candren entered then, silent as ever. He carried a tray—one of the nutritional injectors the temple required them to take every cycle. None of them needed it. But routine was holy. He offered one to Mitus, who declined, then to Riven, who waved it off with a grunt.
"Do you remember what he said before it all started?" Candren asked. "Back at the drop point, before the ship broke atmosphere?"
"Yeah," Riven muttered. "He said if he died, he hoped it'd be fast."
They were quiet for a long while after that.
Then Fitus stepped in from the corridor, not looking at anyone.
"Enough," he growled. "We've all lost brothers. Mourning them like this doesn't bring them back."
Riven's head snapped up. "What does then?"
"Mission," Fitus said coldly. "Execution. Efficiency. You honor the fallen by becoming what they died trying to be. Not by wallowing like children."
"You're wrong," Valkar's voice cut in.
He had entered behind Fitus, unannounced. There was a weight in his presence—like stone that remembered war.
"We remember them because if we don't, we become the machines they tried to save us from becoming."
Fitus turned, eyes sharp. "We already are machines."
"No," Valkar said, stepping forward, "We're not. Not yet. Not while we still feel. Not while their names still sting when spoken."
Mitus stood slowly. "What if I forget his voice one day?"
"You won't," Valkar said simply.
They all stood there for a moment—shoulder to shoulder, framed in flickering lights and the smell of oil and old steel. No one said anything more.
Then Mitus crossed the room, knelt beside his weapons, and with steady hands began engraving something into the hilt of his blade.
R-I-L-E-N
He didn't ask permission. He didn't need to.
Behind him, Riven did the same.
⸻
They were killers. Monsters in metal. Holy demons forged in blood.
But tonight, they remembered.
And somewhere in the silence, Rilen lived again—if only in steel.