The port town’s familiar stench of salt, fish, and desperation clung to Alex as he limped through the market square, his crutch tapping a hollow rhythm against the cobblestones. His leg had healed enough to walk without support, but the phantom ache of the creature’s bite lingered—a brutal reminder of the island. Beside him, Leonidas, his hulking frame casting a shadow over the stalls, chewed on a stick of dried meat, his eyes scanning the crowd.
“You’re sure about this?” Alex asked, breaking the silence that had stretched between them since they’d left the barracks.
Leonidas snorted. “You’d rather stay here? Guarding drunks and breaking up tavern brawls? We’re wasting our time.” He gestured to a group of bedraggled recruits huddled near the docks, their mismatched armor and dull spears marking them as militia. “That’s not an army. That’s target practice for pirates.”
Alex clenched his jaw. The memory of Lysander’s betrayal and the creature’s gnashing jaws still haunted him. The town guard was a dead end. But the military… Kronos’s mark prickled under his sleeve. Power, the Titan’s voice seemed to whisper. You need it to survive.
“The reserve academy in Mycenia,” Leonidas pressed, lowering his voice. “They’re recruiting for the southern campaigns. Real training. Real battles. You want to rot here, or learn how to win wars?”
Alex’s fingers brushed the compass hidden beneath his tunic. Its needle had quivered north for days—toward Mycenia. Coincidence? He doubted it.
---
They left at dawn, joining a caravan of merchants and pilgrims on the dusty northern road. By midday, they’d fallen into step with two others: Thalassa, a sharp-eyed archer from a fishing village, her bow slung over a quiver of fletched arrows, and Darius, a wiry ex-smuggler with a sardonic grin and a dagger collection strapped to his thighs.
“Heard the academy’s ‘endurance test’ is just a fancy way of saying ‘see who dies first,’” Darius drawled, kicking a pebble into the brush. “Bet half these pretty boys”—he nodded at a group of well-dressed youths arguing over their saddlebags—“piss themselves before the first mile.”
Thalassa rolled her eyes. “And I bet you’ll be the one stealing their rations when they collapse.”
Leonidas chuckled, but Alex kept silent. The compass hummed against his chest, its pull stronger with every step. Chaos energy, he thought. Divinity. The academy was a means to an end—a forge to temper his strength, to prepare him for whatever Kronos demanded.
---
The academy loomed atop a scarred hill, its limestone walls pockmarked by centuries of weather and warfare. A line of hopefuls snaked down the slope, their faces drawn with exhaustion. At the gate, a grizzled drillmaster barked orders, his voice like gravel.
“You think this is a festival? Move!”
The endurance test began at midnight. No torches. No water. Just a twenty-mile march through the rocky foothills, each recruit laden with a sandbag equal to half their weight.
“Drop the bag, you’re out,” the drillmaster growled. “Fall behind, you’re out. Puke, cry, or pray—you’re out. The ones left standing at dawn join the main regimen. The rest?” He smirked. “Enjoy peeling potatoes.”
Alex adjusted the straps of his sandbag, his shoulders already burning. Leonidas cracked his knuckles, grinning like a wolf. Thalassa muttered a prayer to Artemis. Darius just spat in the dust.
---
The first mile was chaos. Overeager recruits sprinted ahead, only to stumble on loose stones. A boy with a lute on his back—a lute?—collapsed in tears, his bag abandoned. Alex kept pace with Leonidas, their breaths syncing to the crunch of gravel underfoot.
This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
By the third mile, the night air thinned. Alex’s lungs burned. His bad leg screamed. Beside him, Thalassa’s steps faltered.
“Keep. Moving,” Leonidas growled, hauling her upright when she stumbled.
Darius, surprisingly, matched their pace, his smuggler’s legs steady. “Used to outrun coast guards in the dark,” he panted. “This is… nothing.”
At mile ten, hallucinations set in. Shadows writhed at the edges of Alex’s vision. The sandbag felt like a corpse strapped to his back. A girl ahead of them began singing a lullaby before face-planting into the dirt.
Alex’s fingers brushed the slave mark. Just a second, he thought. A flicker of reversed time to catch my breath—
“Don’t.” Leonidas’s hand clamped his shoulder. “They’re watching.”
Alex followed his gaze. On a ridge above, silhouetted against the moon, stood the drillmaster and two others, their eyes glinting like hawks. Testing for more than endurance, he realized. Testing discipline.
Mile fifteen. The group had dwindled to thirty. Thalassa vomited bile but kept walking. Darius’s jokes had died. Leonidas’s face was a mask of sweat and determination.
Mile twenty. The horizon bled pink. Alex’s vision tunneled. His legs moved on instinct.
“Last hundred paces!” the drillmaster roared. “Move!”
Alex stumbled across the finish line, collapsing beside Leonidas as the sun crested the hills. They’d made it. Barely.
---
The main regimen was a symphony of pain. Dawn till dusk, they drilled:
- Shield walls on the scorching parade ground, their arms trembling under the weight of bronze. - Spear drills until their palms bled, the sergeants mocking every misstep. - Night marches through thorn-choked ravines, the instructors howling curses like demons.
Thalassa excelled at archery, her arrows splitting knotted ropes at a hundred paces. Darius, despite his complaints, had a thief’s knack for stealth, slipping past sentries like smoke. Leonidas, predictably, dominated hand-to-hand combat, his fists reducing training dummies to splinters.
And Alex? He survived.
But survival wasn’t enough. During a midnight sparring session, a hulking recruit named Kastor—a blacksmith’s son with a grudge and a truncheon—cornered him behind the barracks.
“You don’t belong here, cripple,” Kastor sneered, swinging at Alex’s bad leg.
Pain exploded. Alex’s vision blurred. The slave mark burned.
Five seconds.
He reversed time.
This time, when Kastor swung, Alex was ready. He ducked, driving his dagger’s pommel into the brute’s kidney. Kastor crumpled, swearing.
“Try again,” Alex hissed, “and I’ll take more than your pride.”
---
The recruits became a unit. Thalassa’s arrows covered Darius’s flank during skirmishes. Leonidas hauled weaker recruits over obstacle walls. Even Alex, despite his limp, found his niche: strategy.
“You’ve got a mind for war,” the drillmaster grudgingly admitted after Alex outmaneuvered him in a mock siege. “Waste of time, thinking. But… useful.”
At night, around stolen campfires, they traded stories. Thalassa spoke of her sister, sold to a merchant’s caravan. Darius joked about the time he’d smuggled wine in a priest’s coffin. Leonidas, uncharacteristically quiet, mentioned a village burned by raiders—a village he’d failed to protect.
Alex said little. How could he explain Kronos? The compass? The creature? Instead, he honed his Aspect in secret, reversing seconds to perfect a sword stroke or dodge a blow. Each use drained him, but each drop of chaos energy absorbed—stolen from sparring partners’ bruises, from the rage of the drills—strengthened the mark.
---
One moonless night, the drillmaster summoned them to the armory. “Real steel tonight,” he said, tossing Alex a sword. “No blunts. No mercy.”
The exercise was simple: defend the armory from “raiders”—older recruits armed with clubs and fire arrows.
Alex’s squad barricaded the doors, Thalassa’s arrows picking off attackers. Darius vanished into the shadows, sabotaging siege ladders. Leonidas held the breach, his roar scattering foes.
But the raiders broke through. A flaming arrow grazed Alex’s arm. Pain seared. Chaos energy surged.
Reverse.
He pivoted, slicing the arrow from the air before it struck. The attacker gaped. Alex disarmed him, the man’s confusion buying time to reinforce the door.
At dawn, the drillmaster declared their victory. “Not bad,” he grunted. “But war isn’t a game. Remember that.”
As the others celebrated, Alex slipped away, the compass cold against his chest. Mycenia had made him stronger, but Kronos’s task loomed. Somewhere, divinity waited—and with it, the path home.
The chapter closed with Alex standing on the battlements, watching the horizon. Below, Leonidas laughed with the squad, their voices rising into the dawn. For the first time, Alex felt a pang of doubt. These people trust me. What happens when Kronos demands I betray them?
But the compass needle quivered, relentless. North. Always north.