Extra To Protagonist
Chapter 153 153: Runaway

The regroup point wasn't a structure. It wasn't even a trench.

Just a gash in the hillside where the soil had broken open, shallow enough to crawl into, deep enough to not die immediately.

A few hunks of dead wood lay stacked against the wall, maybe to hold the slope. Maybe to give the illusion of cover.

Merlin stumbled in and immediately hit knees.

Blood soaked through his shirt. His side had started to throb again. The pain was honest, almost comforting.

Other cadets were already there.

A girl with a broken nose was crouched in one corner, fingers trembling around a strip of bandage she didn't know how to use. Her boots were soaked in someone else's blood.

One of the older boys sat against the far wall, muttering something about "converging lines" and "back flank exposed," over and over like a prayer.

Another girl, darker hair, sharper posture, met Merlin's eyes.

She didn't say anything.

Didn't need to.

They were all breathing. That was enough.

He sat back against the wall, one leg stretched, the other bent up to rest his arm.

No one talked.

Not at first.

Just the heavy breathing of people trying to keep still. Someone retched in the corner. The girl with the broken nose dropped her bandage, picked it up again, then dropped it again.

Merlin closed his eyes.

'This isn't just a memory. This is a wound.'

He could still feel the heat from the blast that took Arlen. Still feel the crack in his shoulder from the fall. He knew this wasn't his body, but the weight in his chest didn't care.

'He's gone.'

Arlen, the way he used to lean back on his elbows during breaks. The way he kicked pebbles when he thought no one was watching. The stupid joke he kept trying to make about boiled eggs and immortality.

'All of it. Gone.'

He opened his eyes.

The muttering boy was quiet now. His head had tipped forward. Asleep, or unconscious. Merlin couldn't tell.

A cough to his left.

The dark-haired girl had inched closer. She sat across from him now, knees drawn up.

"You dragged him out, didn't you?" she asked.

Her voice was hoarse. Not soft. Not hard. Just flat.

Merlin didn't answer right away.

Then, "Yeah."

"Was he alive?"

"Yeah."

She nodded once. Looked down at her hands.

"What's your name?" she asked.

Merlin hesitated. Then remembered. Right. Not Merlin.

"Rethan."

The name tasted strange again. Not foreign. Just… mismatched.

"I'm Cas," she said. "Don't worry. I won't remember you tomorrow."

He frowned. "What?"

"You'll be someone else by then. That's how it works, right?"

She gave a weak smile. It wasn't sarcastic. Just tired.

"Next fight, we'll pretend this one didn't happen. Otherwise we'd never move."

'How many times has she done this?'

He rubbed at his wrist. Dirt clung to the sweat there. His skin felt too tight.

"I won't forget," he said.

Cas looked at him again. Her eyes were rimmed red, but dry.

"That's stupid," she said. "You think it matters?"

"Maybe not."

"Then why?"

He thought about it. Really thought.

Then: "Because he didn't get to."

She didn't reply.

Just turned her head away. Not like she was offended. More like she didn't want to be in the same sentence as that truth.

One of the kids by the wall stirred. Whispered something too quiet to catch.

Someone else sobbed once, sharp and then silent.

Merlin leaned his head back against the earth.

He tried not to think of the seal.

The gods.

The system.

[Observer Count: 68]

[The Smiling Witness says nothing.]

[The Judge with No Mouth has paused.]

[The Crownless Mother waits.]

'I'm just a page in someone else's book now.'

He dug his fingers into the dirt until his nails hurt.

'But I'm not closing it.'

Not until it finishes.

Even if it means watching everyone die.

Even if it means dying again himself.

—

The regroup trench didn't have a name. It didn't have a number either. No flag, no sigil, no assigned comms point. Just a pit that hadn't caved in yet.

And that meant it was never going to last.

The first warning wasn't shouting.

It was a noise.

A crack.

Short. Snapped.

Wood?

No.

Merlin's eyes opened fast. He didn't move.

The sound came again.

He wasn't the only one who noticed this time.

Cas had tensed across from him. Her whole body, shoulders, calves, spine, set tight like she'd just remembered she had one.

Merlin lifted a hand. Just two fingers. A signal he hadn't remembered learning. Hold.

She nodded.

A breath behind them caught sharp.

Someone whispered, "Did you hear—"

Then something slammed into the top of the trench.

A body.

Face-first.

Still alive.

The boy screamed as he fell down into them, half his shoulder already torn open, something metallic lodged in his gut. Not clean metal. Twisted. Black.

"BACK!" Cas shouted, already moving, dragging the kid behind her.

Merlin rose. Too fast. His side tore with the motion, but he didn't stop.

More sounds above.

The shuffle of boots. The dry scrape of loose soil under pressure.

Voices. No language. Just tone.

Rushed. Sure.

A shadow dropped into the trench from above, landing like it had done this before.

Not cadet. Not instructor.

Armor black and laced with silver veins.

Too small to be full-body. Too wide to be ceremonial.

A blade swung up.

Merlin ducked instinctively.

The tip missed by inches.

Someone behind him screamed.

He rolled, grabbed the broken end of a support beam, and drove it into the thing's gut.

The armor caught it, but not all of it.

The intruder staggered.

Cas came in behind him with a scavenged pickaxe from the wall. No hesitation. Swung low. A crunch. Then another.

Merlin pushed himself up.

The screaming hadn't stopped.

There were more shadows now.

Dropping into the trench like it was their turn.

No orders. No announcements.

Just blood.

And Merlin moved.

—

He caught a blade with the edge of his arm, wrong angle. It sliced through leather and into skin. Warm. Wet. But shallow.

He dropped to a crouch, spun the splintered beam in one hand, and jammed it up under the attacker's chin.

The man went stiff, then dropped.

Cas grabbed the next body and shoved it into the wall.

Another cadet screamed something unintelligible.

Merlin spotted the speaker, it was the boy who'd been muttering earlier. Blood at his temple. He was crawling backwards, right into a second intruder.

"MOVE!" Merlin yelled.

Too late.

The blade didn't swing.

It thrust.

Straight down.

Merlin watched the boy stiffen.

One gasp.

One blink.

Then he stopped.

Merlin swung.

The wood cracked on impact. Split. Broke at the middle.

His arm throbbed. His side burned. The trench felt too tight, too loud.

'This isn't a battle anymore. This is a cleanup.'

They weren't being fought. They were being removed.

A blur on his left.

He turned, elbow up, met resistance.

Another blade.

This one connected.

His thigh screamed.

He went down hard.

Cas screamed something, he couldn't hear it.

Blood hit his face.

Not his.

He blinked and found a cadet he didn't know standing over him.

The girl was maybe eleven. Shaking.

She had a stick in her hands.

The end was coated in blood.

"You good?" she yelled.

He tried to nod.

It came out as a cough.

She reached down, grabbed his collar, dragged him out of the trench wall. Not far. Just enough.

"I didn't sign up for this," she muttered.

Merlin's hand found the edge of the wall. He pulled himself to his knees.

Something whistled.

Cas swore loud. Metal clanged.

Another cadet, bigger, stronger, rushed the wall and clambered up.

"No!" someone yelled. "Don't break cover!"

Too late.

A burst of black light struck him in the chest. He seized up mid-climb. Then toppled backward, smoking.

Merlin dragged himself forward.

'Need a weapon. Anything. Even a rock.'

He found a shard of someone's blade. No handle. Just jagged steel.

Close enough.

He pushed forward again.

Cas met him halfway.

"You're bleeding everywhere," she said, panting. "We've got like four left."

He looked around.

Two boys. One girl. The small girl who'd saved him.

And Cas.

Five.

Maybe six if you counted the one still screaming down at the edge of the trench. Sounded more like panic now.

"We fall back," Cas said. "No regroup. Just run."

Merlin nodded.

"On three?"

"Now."

They jumped together.

Out of the trench.

—

The hill was half-shadow.

Broken trees. Blood in the roots. Smoke curling from the torn earth.

They ran through it anyway.

Merlin's leg dragged, but it moved.

He didn't know how.

He just kept going.

The others followed. No one shouted. No one led.

They just ran.

Because no one wanted to be the last one to fall.

And no one wanted to look back and find out who already had.

—

The trees weren't trees anymore. They were jagged silhouettes, burned down to nerves. Every branch looked like it had been clawed, every root pulled like teeth.

Merlin didn't hear footsteps behind them. That was worse.

Silence meant someone was making less noise than them.

Cas kept looking back. Every ten paces. She didn't say anything, just ran with her mouth open, breathing too hard to waste it on warnings.

The girl who'd pulled him out of the trench, he still didn't know her name, kept up without asking for help.

Her shirt was soaked down one side, and her right shoe was gone, but she ran like stopping meant death.

It probably did.

"Split!" Cas shouted.

Merlin flinched.

She pointed at a tree with a hollowed center. "Take three and peel left. Rest with me!"

Merlin jerked his head at the two boys, gestured with his arm. The younger one nodded. The older one hesitated.

"GO!" Merlin barked, louder than he meant to.

They did.

Cas vanished into the trees with the others.