The transport shuddered as it descended through the cloud layer, and Valoris pressed her forehead against the window to watch the academy emerge from the grey.

  The speakers crackled to life overhead. Not the pilot's voice announcing descent, a recording. Martial music swelled through the cabin, all brass and drums and orchestral triumph, the kind of composition designed to stir something primal in the chest. Over it, a narrator's voice, smooth and professionally modulated:

  "--proud to serve humanity's greatest defense. The Dimensional Defense Academy has produced fifty years of heroes who stand between civilization and chaos. You are the next generation of humanity's shield. You are the future. You are–"

  Someone two rows back made a quiet gagging sound. The girl beside Valoris didn't look up from her tablet.

  The propaganda recording continued, but then shifted: "--following in the footsteps of legends. The First Pilots who gave their lives to develop dimensional combat. Kiana Kade. Matthias Wright. Yara Okoye. Pioneers who–"

  Valoris closed her eyes. Of course they'd mention her. Of course the first thing she'd hear was her ancestor's name, broadcast to hundreds of students who would look at her face and immediately know exactly who she was. She tuned it out and focused on the view.

  The academy looked like someone had built a fortress into a wound.

  The dimensional rift scar stretched across the landscape like a canyon carved by gods: kilometers wide, edges ragged where reality had torn years ago and never quite healed. The academy sprawled across the eastern ridge, all brutal geometry and reinforced concrete, structures built to withstand forces that shouldn't exist in baseline reality. Towers rose at irregular intervals, their surfaces studded with sensors that tracked dimensional fluctuations. Training grounds spread between buildings like kill zones, bare earth and obstacle courses designed to break bodies into something harder.

  Valoris had seen photographs. Every Kade child studied the academy's layout before they were old enough to understand what it meant. But photographs couldn't capture the wrongness of it. The way the air seemed thicker near the rift, the way light bent at strange angles, the way her eyes wanted to slide away from looking at it directly.

  And at the heart of it all, barely visible from this altitude, the main structure descended into the rift itself. Levels upon levels carved into stone, burrowing toward whatever waited at the bottom.

  "--average pilot serves eight to ten glorious years protecting billions of lives–" the recording continued, seamlessly cheerful. "The corruption exposure is carefully monitored, and all graduates receive comprehensive medical support–"

  Lies, Valoris thought, but kept her face neutral. She'd heard the stories from her grandmother. Knew what "comprehensive medical support" actually meant.

  As they dropped lower, details began to resolve. The memorial wall dominated the entrance plaza, black stone etched with the names of pilots who'd died in service. Thousands of names. Valoris knew her ancestors would be among them: Kade pilots scattered among the dead, their legendary careers ending in corruption or combat.

  Above the memorial, carved in letters three meters high: "VIGILANCE ETERNAL. HUMANITY PROTECTED."

  "First time seeing it in person?"

  She turned. The girl in the seat beside her had black hair cropped short and a voice that suggested she'd asked out of politeness rather than actual interest. Military bearing in her posture, family insignia on her bag, clearly another legacy recruit.

  "Yes," Valoris said.

  "It's bigger than the pictures." The girl's attention had already shifted back to her tablet, fingers moving across tactical diagrams with the efficiency of someone who'd been studying them for years. "Most things are."

  The transport banked, and Valoris caught a glimpse of the landing field: dozens of other transports already grounded, hundreds of students streaming toward the intake center like ants toward sugar. Too many to count. Too many to distinguish individuals from this height.

  The recording switched to a new message, the music shifting to something more intimate, inspiring: "Every pilot makes a difference. Every sacrifice protects millions. Your families will be proud. Your names will be remembered–"

  Valoris turned her attention away from the window and closed her eyes. She was about to become one name in a sea of names. One candidate among hundreds. For the first time in fifteen years, the Kade legacy might not be enough to make her visible.

  The thought was terrifying and liberating in equal measure.

  The transport touched down, and Valoris filed out with her group. Uniformed personnel directed them to the main building, along with the other grounded transports.

  But first, they had to pass through Founders' Plaza.

  The monuments dominated the entrance: six massive statues in bronze and steel, each depicting a pilot and their mech. The First Pilots. The experimental subjects who'd volunteered when no one knew if summoning would kill them, who'd developed the protocols that made the academy possible. Six survivors out of the initial fourteen.

  The largest statue stood at the center. Kiana Kade and Sovereign.

  The sculptor had captured them mid-motion, Kiana with one hand raised toward her mech, Sovereign's form rising behind her like a god made manifest. The plaque beneath read:

  KIANA KADE

  FIRST GENERATION PILOT

  SOVEREIGN - COMMAND CLASS

  "SHE WALKED INTO THE UNKNOWN SO OTHERS COULD FOLLOW"

  Around her, other founding pilots stood in similar poses. Matthias Wright with his heavy assault mech. Yara Okoye with her reconnaissance configuration. Others whose names Valoris had memorized from history texts.

  But Kiana's statue was largest. Central. Impossible to ignore.

  Students streamed past, many pausing to look up at the monuments with awe. Valoris heard whispers:

  "That's the Kade founder–"

  "--experimental pilots who figured out summoning–"

  "--sixty percent fatality rate before they developed protocols–"

  A hand grabbed her elbow. The girl from the transport; short black hair, military bearing.

  "You're her descendant." Not a question. An assessment. "That why you're here? Trying to live up to the statue?"

  Valoris pulled her arm free, kept walking. The statue's shadow stretched across the plaza, and she had to pass through it to reach the intake center.

  She walked into the unknown so others could follow.

  The weight settled on her shoulders like physical pressure. Four generations of Kades had followed. Amarys. Nessa. Tamara. Honora. All of them trying to match what Kiana had achieved when she'd volunteered for experimental procedures that killed two out of three candidates.

  And now Valoris.

  The intake center was controlled chaos. Valoris stepped into noise. Hundreds of voices layering over each other, luggage clattering, instructors shouting directions, the underlying hum of machinery that never quite stopped. And everywhere, everywhere, the propaganda.

  Massive banners hung from the ceiling, each one ten meters long, showing pilots in heroic poses. STRENGTH. HONOR. SACRIFICE. One showed a mech silhouetted against sunrise, pilot somehow visible in the cockpit with an expression of noble determination. YOUR COURAGE SAVES BILLIONS. Another depicted five pilots standing in formation, their mechs arrayed behind them like metallic angels. ELITE. LEGENDARY. ETERNAL.

  The walls were plastered with posters, glossy, professionally designed, impossible to ignore. A close-up of a pilot's face, young and unblemished, eyes full of conviction: "I PROTECT HUMANITY." A mech mid-combat, weapons firing, entity dissolving in the background: "DIMENSIONAL DEFENSE: HUMANITY'S SHIELD." A group of smiling pilots in dress uniform: "JOIN THE GREATEST."

  None of the posters showed corruption scars. None showed trembling hands or silver eyes or pilots who couldn't remember their children's names. None showed the forty percent who'd wash out, or the ones who'd summon and fail, or the reality of a handful years followed by slow decline.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The air tasted like ozone and anxiety, sharp on her tongue.

  "LINE UP ALPHABETICALLY BY LAST NAME," an instructor bellowed from somewhere she couldn't see. "A THROUGH E LEFT CORRIDOR, F THROUGH M CENTER, N THROUGH Z RIGHT. KEEP MOVING. YOU'RE BLOCKING TRAFFIC."

  Someone jostled her from behind, a tall boy with shoulders like a linebacker and an apologetic grimace. "Sorry, sorry, trying to find the J line…"

  "Center corridor," Valoris said automatically, her voice flat.

  "Right, yeah, thanks–" He was already moving past her, swallowed by the crowd.

  Valoris adjusted her grip on her single bag (packed according to the supply list: three standard uniforms, essential toiletries, Academy-issued tablet sent upon acceptance, nothing personal that couldn't fit in a footlocker) and joined the flow toward the center corridor. Legacy training helped here. She knew how to move through crowds without drawing attention, how to navigate social spaces while maintaining appropriate distance, how to be present without being noticed.

  It lasted approximately forty seconds.

  "Is that–"

  "--Valoris Kade, did you see–"

  "--thought she'd be taller–"

  The whispers spread like ripples in still water, students' heads turning, assessments being made. She felt the weight of recognition settling across her shoulders like a cloak she couldn't shrug off.

  A girl with dark skin and calculating eyes tracked her movement through the crowd. "Didn't think royalty would be slumming with us common folk."

  Her companion, who was shorter and wearing a scholarship program badge, laughed. "Probably has private quarters already arranged."

  Valoris kept her expression neutral, her pace steady, her attention forward. Engaging would only make it worse. Better to be a target moving through their field of vision than a stationary one they could focus on.

  She passed beneath another banner: HEROES ARE FORGED HERE. The pilot depicted looked no older than she was, face unlined, body whole, no visible signs of what the training would actually cost.

  The center corridor funneled into a massive processing hall that had clearly been a hangar in some previous life. Industrial lighting cast harsh shadows across rows of stations: medical, psychological, administrative, equipment distribution. Hundreds of students moved through them in orchestrated waves, each station extracting information, measurements, data points. Reducing people to metrics the academy could track and categorize and eventually discard if they proved insufficient.

  More posters lined the walls here, impossible to escape: EXCELLENCE THROUGH DISCIPLINE. DIMENSIONAL DEFENSE: A PROUD TRADITION. 75 YEARS OF HEROES.

  "Kade, Valoris," she said when she reached the intake desk.

  The processor, a woman with greying hair at the temples and the exhausted efficiency of someone who'd done this a thousand times, didn't look up from her tablet. "Identification."

  Valoris handed over her documents. The woman scanned them, frowned slightly at whatever appeared on her screen, then nodded. "Medical station three. Psychological evaluation station seven. Dimensional resonance testing station twelve.” She printed the numbers on a slip of paper and handed it back with Valoris’ ID documents. “Aptitude assessment when those three are complete. You have four hours. Questions?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "Next."

  Valoris moved to medical station three, where a technician with callused fingers and a bored expression directed her through the standard battery: height, weight, visual acuity, cardiovascular assessment, bone density scan, neural pathway mapping. The questions were clinical and invasive.

  "Any family history of dimensional corruption?"

  "Yes." Valoris kept her voice level. "Grandmother. Fifteen years active service. Mother. Twelve years. Great-grandmother. Nine years."

  The technician looked up from her tablet, recognition flickering across her face. "Kade. You're…"

  "Yes."

  "Huh." The technician made notes. "Interesting genetic lineage. High dimensional resonance sensitivity runs in families. The first generation pilots showed unusual compatibility markers. Your ancestor helped us understand what successful summoning requires. Every protocol we have is built on data from those early pilots. You're carrying significant historical genetics."

  Historical genetics. Like she was a museum specimen. A data point.

  The technician tapped at the tablet without looking at her. "Any signs of inherited susceptibility?"

  "None documented."

  "We'll see." She pressed a scanner against Valoris's temple, and something cold flooded through her skull: sensation without pain, presence without substance. "Hold still."

  Valoris held still and tried not to think about her grandmother's trembling hands, her silver eye, the way she moved through shadows like smoke.

  Ten years. Maybe twelve.

  The scanner beeped. The technician frowned at the readout, made more notes, dismissed her with a gesture. "Station seven."

  Station seven was psychological evaluation, and the assessor had the kind of gentle voice that made Valoris's teeth ache with suspicion. She sat in an uncomfortable chair and answered questions designed to probe for instability, trauma, psychological contraindications to neural bonding.

  "Why do you want to be a pilot?"

  Because my family expects it. Because I'm terrified of disappointing them. Because I chose this in a fit of childish pique and now I'm committed.

  "To protect people," Valoris said, giving the answer the assessor wanted to hear. "To serve humanity against the dimensional threat."

  "And if you wash out? If you're not selected for pilot training?"

  "Then I'll serve in whatever capacity the academy determines I'm suited for."

  Lies came easier than truth here. The assessor made notes with the satisfied expression of someone checking boxes on a form.

  Station twelve was dimensional resonance testing, and that was harder.

  They put her in a meditation chamber, a small room with blank padded walls, a single light source that could be dimmed to nothing. An instructor with the glint of metal showing under his jacket cuffs (retired pilot, she realized with a jolt) explained the process in clipped sentences while he attached sensors to her temples.

  "Sit. Center yourself. When ready, reach for the dimensional boundary. Don't try to cross. Don’t try to touch it yet. Feel its presence. If you can perceive the boundary, you have baseline sensitivity. If you can maintain perception without breaking focus, you have potential. If you can shape your perception of it, you have what we need. Questions?"

  "No, sir."

  "Begin."

  The light dimmed. Silence pressed in from all sides. Valoris closed her eyes (easier somehow, not seeing the walls) and tried to find the meditative state her family tutors had drilled into her for years.

  Breathe. Center. Release.

  At first there was nothing but her own awareness, her own breathing, the subtle ache in her shoulders from carrying tension she couldn't release. Then–

  There.

  Sensation at the edge of consciousness. Not sound, not sight, not any sense she had words for. Presence. Something vast pressing against the fabric of reality from a direction that didn't exist in three-dimensional space. Cold that wasn't temperature. Weight that wasn't mass.

  The dimensional boundary.

  Valoris reached toward it with her mind (her consciousness? her soul? what was the correct term for the thing that reached?), and the boundary responded. She felt it shift, orient toward her attention like a predator tracking movement. Not hostile. Not friendly. Just aware that something was here.

  Her breath caught. The contact slipped.

  "Maintain," the instructor's voice said from somewhere outside the chamber. Distant and irrelevant. "Hold the perception. Let it know you're there."

  She reached again, more carefully this time, and the boundary allowed the approach. Held steady. Waiting.

  What are you? she thought at it, knowing the question was meaningless, asking anyway because she had to know–

  The boundary didn't answer. It just was, infinite and patient and utterly indifferent to her confusion.

  "Good," the instructor said. "Release."

  Valoris pulled back, and the boundary let her go without resistance. The meditation chamber snapped back into focus; padded walls, dim light, her own body sitting cross-legged on cold floor. Her hands were shaking.

  "Baseline sensitivity confirmed," the instructor said, making notes. "Controlled contact maintained for forty-seven seconds without break. Response time within acceptable parameters. You'll do."

  You'll do. Not exceptional. Not legendary. Just adequate.

  It should have felt like failure. Instead it felt like relief.

  Aptitude testing took two hours.

  They measured her physical capabilities (adequate but not exceptional; all those private tutors had prepared her academically, less so physically), her tactical reasoning (high marks, pattern recognition, strategic thinking), her technical knowledge (extensive theoretical understanding, limited practical application as of yet), her stress response (controlled but brittle; she knew they'd noted the way her jaw tightened under pressure).

  By the time she finished, her head ached and her shoulders were locked with tension and she'd answered approximately ten thousand questions about things she couldn't possibly know yet.

  "TEMPORARY HOUSING ASSIGNMENTS," a different instructor shouted as students filtered out of aptitude testing. "POD ASSIGNMENTS BASED ON ALPHABETICAL SORTING. YOU'LL HAVE PERMANENT SQUAD PLACEMENT IN TWO WEEKS AFTER INITIAL ASSESSMENT PERIOD. FIND YOUR POD DESIGNATION, PROCEED TO ASSIGNED BARRACKS, STOW YOUR GEAR. ORIENTATION ASSEMBLY AT EIGHTEEN HUNDRED HOURS. DO NOT BE LATE."

  Valoris found her name on the display board: POD K. BARRACKS 7, LEVEL 3, SECTION E.

  Twenty names listed below the designation. She scanned them quickly, looking for anyone she might know from prep programs or family connections.

  Sterling, Quinn.

  Thorne, Kaito.

  Vex, Sable.

  Zavaretti, Kessa.

  Strangers, mostly. A few names she recognized from military family rosters. Thorne was another legacy dynasty, though she'd never met Kaito personally. Vex had a mixed history, pilots and engineers. The rest were unknowns. Twenty people thrown together because they happened to be spat out of a computer in sequence.

  For two weeks, these would be her pod-mates.

  She shouldered her bag and headed for the barracks, joining the general flow of students navigating the academy's labyrinthine corridors for the first time. More propaganda lined the walls, recruitment posters that should have been unnecessary given that everyone here had already been recruited. DIMENSIONAL DEFENSE: THE HIGHEST CALLING. PROTECT. SERVE. ENDURE. A particularly egregious one showed a pilot and their mech rendered in heroic silhouette: LEGENDS NEVER DIE.

  But pilots do, Valoris thought. All of them. Eventually.