...THREE CENTURIES EARLIER...
The Great Shadow War had ended six months earlier when Astraeus Eldrath gathered twelve men in a room with no windows.
They were not the Empire's strongest. They were the ones who had survived—a difference Eldrath considered more valuable than any other quality.
"You have seen what war does to those who are unprepared," Eldrath said, in a voice that historical records would describe centuries later as "neither gentle nor cruel, only final."
"I am going to build an academy. It will train people capable of facing what you faced. But training without real consequences produces nothing but theory."
He looked at the twelve.
"I need something that teaches without words. Something that shows the weight of failure without killing those who are still learning."
One of the twelve, the oldest, a scar stretching across his entire face, understood first.
"You want us to die."
"I want you to remain," Eldrath corrected. "There is a difference."
