The morning of summoning began in darkness.

  Valoris woke at 04:30, though calling it waking implied she'd slept. She'd spent most of the night staring at the darkened ceiling, listening to her squad's breathing. Saren's came too fast, Quinn's too shallow. Zee shifted constantly. Milo murmured in his sleep. All of them awake despite the hour, all of them pretending otherwise.

  Today they would kneel at the edge of dimensional space and reach into vastness beyond human comprehension to pull forth mechs from liquid metal that defied physics.

  Valoris rose silently, moving through her morning routine on autopilot. Shower, uniform, hair pulled back in the severe braid she'd worn for formal events her entire life. She performed each action with deliberate precision that kept her hands from shaking.

  The mirror reflected dark eyes too large in a face gone hollow from weeks of inadequate sleep and insufficient food. She looked fragile, like someone who might shatter under pressure instead of someone who should be reaching into dimensional space and shaping weapons from the boundary between realities.

  But you're doing it anyway, she told her reflection. Because you're a Kade, and Kades don't quit.

  Behind her, movement. Zee sat up in her bunk, expression already set with that determined intensity she carried like armor. Then Saren, moving with efficiency despite obvious exhaustion. Quinn emerged from their covers like someone surfacing from deep water, gasping slightly, already reaching for their tablet. Milo rolled over, glasses already on his face, somehow looking terrified and excited simultaneously.

  "Morning," Valoris said quietly. "Ready?"

  "No," Zee said immediately. "But we're doing it anyway."

  "Statistically, we're prepared," Quinn said, voice flat with suppressed emotion. "Training completion is adequate. Meditation proficiency is satisfactory. Dimensional resonance is within acceptable parameters."

  "I think I'm going to throw up," Milo announced cheerfully. "But also maybe pass out? Can you do both simultaneously? We should find out."

  "You're not doing either," Saren said sharply. "You're going to walk to that reservoir, kneel at the designated position, and summon your mech. All of us are. Failure is not acceptable."

  "Failure is always acceptable," Valoris corrected gently. "It's just not what we're planning on."

  They dressed in silence. At 05:00 exactly, the announcement came through their barracks speakers: "Second-year students report to reservoir chamber. Summoning begins at 06:00."

  Valoris's hands were shaking. She pressed them against her thighs, willing steadiness that refused to come.

  "Hey." Zee appeared beside her, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. "You got this, squad leader. We all got this."

  "What if we don't?"

  "Then we don't." Zee's voice carried absolute conviction despite the fear Valoris could see in her eyes. "But we try anyway. Together."

  Together. The word settled into Valoris's chest like warmth against cold.

  The walk to the reservoir chamber felt simultaneously too long and too short.

  Six hundred meters below ground, descending through corridors carved from dimensional rift scar tissue. They walked through architecture that existed in defiance of physics toward a chamber that shouldn't be possible to attempt a transformation that violated every natural law.

  Around them, other second-year students moved in similar silence. Fifty-five squads total. Students who'd survived two years of training and proven themselves capable enough to attempt summoning, who would either become pilots today or fail.

  Apex Squad walked ahead, Kaito's bearing confident even now. His squad moved with synchronized fluidity that suggested they'd already accepted success as inevitable. Maybe for them it was. Maybe some people were just built for dimensional contact, shaped by genetics or psychology or sheer luck into forms that could touch vastness without breaking.

  Valoris tried not to think about the failure rates. Seventy-three percent success overall. One in four candidates failed. And failures ranged from minor setbacks to catastrophic consciousness fragmentation like Candidate Hayashi, who'd been catatonic for years now, mind trapped somewhere between realities where human awareness wasn't designed to exist.

  Don't think about it. Don't think about failure. Think about success.

  They reached the final checkpoint. Massive reinforced doors marked the entrance to the reservoir proper. Instructors waited, checking identification, confirming summoning order, providing final medical clearance. Instructor Kael stood among them, his dimensional exposure scars catching the wrong light, his expression carefully neutral.

  "Chimera Squad," he said as they approached. "Wait in the holding area. When called, approach the reservoir. Squad leader summons first, then the rest in alphabetical order."

  "Understood, sir," Valoris said, voice steadier than she felt.

  The doors opened.

  The reservoir chamber stole breath and consciousness simultaneously.

  Valoris had seen it before during the observation session, witnessing both success and failure. But today was different, her own impending summoning casting a weight on everything. Cathedral architecture carved from stone that had been warped by dimensional exposure, walls rising sixty meters to a ceiling lost in shadows that moved wrong. And in the center, dominating everything: the pool.

  Liquid metal pooled in a circular reservoir thirty meters across, glowing with light that hurt to perceive directly. Not quite silver, not quite blue, something that existed between colors the way the substance itself existed between realities. Reality bent around it visibly. Space warped within a few meters of the pool's edge. Time felt thick and wrong. Consciousness struggled to maintain coherent sequential experience near dimensional substrate in such concentrated form.

  Galleries surrounded the reservoir at multiple levels. Observation platforms where families, instructors, command staff, and witnesses could watch summonings. Already they were filling with people. Valoris scanned the crowd, found her family almost immediately.

  Her parents sat in the designated family section, her father's military bearing perfect even in civilian clothing, her mother's trembling hands folded in her lap. And behind them, her grandmother.

  The dimensional exposure scars caught the pool's light, seeming to glow from within. Her silver eye reflected the liquid metal like a mirror. She sat wrapped in a shawl despite the chamber's controlled climate, hands resting on her cane, both watching and remembering. Five generations. She'd been here twice before: once for her own summoning, once for Valoris's mother's. Now she was here for Valoris.

  Their eyes met across the distance. Grandmother nodded once in acknowledgment.

  Don't let go, her grandmother had said once, when as a curious child Valoris had asked about summoning. Whatever you touch in dimensional space, don't let go until you've shaped what you need. Fear is acceptable. Breaking is not.

  Valoris tore her gaze away, focused on the immediate situation.

  Commander Thrace stood near the pool's edge, scarred and authoritative and entirely unmoved by the reservoir's reality-warping presence. She'd knelt here herself once, pulled forth the substrate that became her mech. She surveyed the assembled students with assessment that probably measured survival probability with disturbing accuracy.

  "Second-years," Thrace said. The murmuring in the chamber subsided. "You're here because you earned this opportunity. You've proven yourselves capable of attempting summoning."

  She paused, surveyed them.

  "Summoning is dangerous. You know this. You've watched the failure footage. You understand the risks: consciousness instability, dimensional feedback, bonding rejection, permanent neural damage. Approximately one in four candidates fails. The failures range from recoverable setbacks to catastrophic outcomes that require permanent medical care."

  No one moved. No one spoke. The pool glowed with patient indifference in the chamber's center.

  "You will summon by squad," Thrace continued. "Squad leaders first, alphabetical order within squads. Your squadmates will watch from designated positions. Families will observe from galleries. When your name is called, you will approach the pool, kneel at the marked position, and begin meditation protocols. When you're ready, when your consciousness is coherent and your will is focused, you will reach beyond the boundary into dimensional space."

  Her expression hardened slightly.

  "What happens next depends on you. Your psyche will shape the substrate. Your consciousness will touch something that exists beyond baseline reality. If your will is strong enough, if your mental coherence holds, you will summon. The liquid metal will respond to your intent. Your mech will rise from the pool, shaped by everything you are and everything you fear and everything you might become."

  She let that settle.

  "If you fail, if consciousness fractures, if your mech rejects you, if your will collapses under dimensional pressure, emergency protocols will engage. Medical teams are standing by. We will extract you. We will provide treatment. But we cannot prevent all consequences of dimensional contact. Some damages are permanent. Some costs are inescapable."

  Valoris felt her squad shift around her.

  "Last opportunity to withdraw," Thrace said flatly. "No judgment. No shame. Just an informed decision. If summoning seems beyond your capability, say so now. There are non-combat roles available. Valuable positions that don't require dimensional contact."

  Silence. Heavy and absolute. No one withdrew. They'd all come too far.

  "Then we begin," Thrace said. "Squad Griffon-53. Approach designated positions. Pilot Candidate Griffon, you're first."

  The first summoning took seventeen minutes.

  Pilot Candidate Griffon knelt at the pool's edge with visible nervousness, her silhouette stark against the liquid metal's glow. She closed her eyes, entered meditation with practiced efficiency, consciousness visibly extending toward the dimensional boundary. The pool responded. Subtle stirring, recognition of intent, liquid metal beginning to flow.

  Then everything happened at once.

  The substrate erupted upward, wrapping around Griffon in ribbons of impossible material. She gasped but held position, arms extending slowly, consciousness shaping the flowing metal through sheer force of will. Structure began forming: skeletal framework suggesting humanoid form but scaled wrong.

  Valoris watched, transfixed. The metal continued flowing, adding layers. Armor plating, joint systems, weapon hardpoints, all of it shaped by Griffon's psyche and dimensional physics operating in concert. The framework grew, expanded, became something massive and deadly and alive in ways mechanical shouldn't be.

  A mech rose from the pool.

  Thirty-eight feet of angular aggression built for power and brutal strikes, colored like storm clouds and lightning. It stood on its own power, liquid metal solidifying into permanent form, optical sensors igniting with awareness as consciousness ignited behind them.

  Griffon stumbled backward, gasping, blood running from her nose, dimensional exposure already leaving marks. But she was conscious. Functional. Successful.

  The gallery erupted in cheering. Commander Thrace approached her. "Successful summoning. Well done, Pilot Griffon. Mech designation?"

  Griffon looked up at her creation, still trembling. "Hephaestus."

  "Official registry confirmed. Hephaestus, Beta-class assault mech, pilot Alexandra Griffon."

  One down.

  The pattern repeated. Squad after squad, candidate after candidate. Successes: mechs rising from the pool in varieties of form and function, each shaped by unique consciousness, each representing psyche made physical. Failures: consciousness breaking under strain, liquid metal collapsing mid-summoning, candidates extracted convulsing or catatonic.

  Valoris watched everything, absorbing details, processing patterns, trying to understand what separated success from failure. Trying to prepare for her own attempt despite knowing preparation was insufficient against dimensional vastness.

  Then Thrace's voice cut through the noise: "Chimera Squad. Approach designated positions."

  Valoris's heart stopped. Started again too fast. Her hands went cold despite the chamber's warmth.

  "Pilot Candidate Kade," Thrace continued. "You're first. Approach the pool when ready."

  As though anyone could be ready for this. As though two years of training prepared consciousness for contact with something that existed beyond time and physics and human comprehension.

  Valoris stood. Her legs worked through muscle memory rather than conscious thought. She walked toward the pool. Meters that felt like kilometers, steps that echoed in the cathedral space.

  Behind her, she heard Zee's voice, quiet but fierce: "You got this, squad leader."

  Then Milo: "Show them what Chimera means."

  Quinn: "Our statistical probability of success is adequate."

  Saren: "Don't embarrass us."

  Her squad. Supporting her in their own ways, using their own languages for encouragement and solidarity and love they couldn't express directly.

  Valoris reached the pool's edge. The liquid metal waited below, glowing with fractured light. She could feel it now. The dimensional pressure, consciousness brushing against space that operated under rules her mind wasn't designed to comprehend.

  She looked up and found her family in the gallery. Grandmother watching with that silver eye that reflected the pool's glow. Parents sitting rigid with expectation. The other faceless audience members. All of them watching. All of them waiting to see if she'd continue the pattern or break it permanently.

  Valoris knelt at the marked position. The stone was cold against her knees. Her hands pressed against her thighs, shaking despite years of practiced control.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Commander Thrace's voice came from behind her: "Pilot Candidate Kade. When ready. Open your mind. Reach beyond. Shape your will. Summon."

  When ready.

  Valoris closed her eyes.

  She began the meditation protocols she'd practiced ten thousand times but never under conditions like this. Breathing slowed. Heartbeat steadied. Consciousness settled into the familiar patterns: focusing inward first, finding center, establishing coherence, making sure her psyche was unified enough to withstand what came next.

  Then: reaching outward.

  Extending awareness beyond the confines of flesh and bone and neural activity. Stretching consciousness toward the boundary she'd touched briefly during meditation practice but never fully crossed. Toward dimensional space that existed parallel to baseline reality, overlapping but separate, accessible only through focused will and open psyche.

  She reached deeper.

  And deeper.

  And then–

  Through.

  EXPANSION.

  The boundary tore.

  Not crossed. Not passed through. Torn. Valoris's consciousness ripped free from her body like flesh from bone, awareness fragmenting across geometries that shouldn't exist. She tried to scream but had no mouth, tried to pull back but had no hands, tried to hold herself together but there was no self anymore, just pieces scattering across dimensional space like shrapnel from an explosion.

  The expansion didn't feel like growth. It felt like dissolution.

  Her sense of identity splintered. She existed in multiple locations simultaneously and her mind wasn't built for that, couldn't process that, was breaking trying to maintain coherence across distances that weren't distances and times that weren't linear. Part of her remained kneeling at the pool. Part of her existed somewhere else, somewhere cold, somewhere vast. Part of her was still fragmenting, spreading thinner, consciousness stretching like skin pulled too tight until it split.

  Pain. Not physical. Worse.

  The agony of neural architecture being forced into configurations it was never designed to support. Synapses firing in patterns that created feedback loops. Her brain trying to process sensory input that had no baseline reference, consciousness attempting to map experiences onto frameworks that couldn't contain them. She was experiencing herself breaking in real-time and couldn't stop it, couldn't prevent it, could only endure as pieces of her psyche fractured under loads they were never meant to carry.

  She tried to remember who she was.

  Valoris. Valoris Kade. Squad leader. Pilot candidate. Five generations of–

  The thought dissolved before she could complete it. Memory became unreliable. Was she Valoris? Had she ever been? The name felt like something she'd read in a book about someone else, someone who'd existed in a reality that operated under rules that made sense, where consciousness stayed inside bodies and awareness had boundaries and you knew where you ended and everything else began.

  Kiana Kade survived this, her mind whispered. For nearly an hour, she survived this. You can too.

  The pool responded.

  The liquid metal erupted toward her scattered awareness. It moved with violence that felt intentional, predatory, like it had been waiting for her to open herself and now it was claiming what it wanted. The substrate touched her consciousness and the sensation was violation. Cold fire burning through parts of herself she'd never known existed. Dimensional physics meeting neural tissue in ways that created cascading failures her brain interpreted as agony because it had no other framework.

  She could feel the metal inside her mind. Could perceive it at levels that didn't have words. Molecular. Quantum. Dimensional states that contradicted each other but were simultaneously true. The substrate was alive but not alive. Conscious but not conscious. It existed in superposition, in states that coexisted, and perceiving it directly was damage, was corruption, was permanent alteration of neural pathways that would never return to baseline configuration.

  Shape it, instinct screamed through the agony. Pour yourself into it before you lose yourself completely. Before there's nothing left to remember what you were.

  Valoris didn't know how. Didn't know anything anymore except pain and terror and the desperate need to anchor herself to something solid before she fragmented beyond recovery.

  She poured everything into the flowing substrate. Not as conscious choice but as survival mechanism. Like someone drowning grabbing whatever they could reach regardless of whether it would actually save them:

  Duty flooding outward like arterial blood. The need to protect, to lead, to be worthy pouring out of her in waves. Must be adequate. Must meet the standard. Must not fail. Five generations watching, five generations of pressure compressing her into smaller and smaller space until there was no room left for who she actually was, just room for who she had to be.

  Fear underneath. Primal. Overwhelming. Terror of inadequacy, of failure, of being the one who broke the pattern. But deeper: fear of the thing touching her consciousness right now. Fear that it would unmake her entirely. Fear that she'd already been unmade and just hadn't realized it yet because the dissolution was happening faster than her fragmenting awareness could process.

  Desperation. Identity tied to success. Worth measured by performance. Can't exist if she fails. Can't exist as herself anymore regardless because something fundamental is changing, has already changed, is breaking her into pieces and reassembling them wrong and she's watching it happen and can't prevent it and doesn't know if she'll recognize herself when it's done.

  Love like a wound. For her squad, for the people she'd sworn to protect, for the cause she'd serve even as doubt infected everything. Love as the thing that made all of this worth the cost. Love as the only anchor she had left.

  Legacy pressing down through dimensional space like physical weight. Five generations of Kades. Blood and genetics and training and expectations. The weight of ancestors made manifest. Every success they'd achieved pressing against her consciousness, demanding she add her own success to the pattern or accept that she'd be remembered as the failure, the weak one, the Kade who wasn't enough.

  The metal responded.

  It shaped itself according to her consciousness. It tore through her psyche like hands sorting through debris, taking what it wanted, discarding the rest. She felt it building structure from her awareness.

  It was working. The summoning was working. The metal was taking form.

  And then something else touched her.

  CONTACT.

  The presence arrived without warning.

  Not arrived. Had always been there. She'd just been too small to perceive it before dimensional contact forced her awareness into shapes that could.

  It was–

  No. No words. Human language wasn't built for this. Her mind tried anyway, tried to impose familiar categories onto something that existed outside every framework consciousness had evolved to process:

  Vast didn't capture it. The entity didn't occupy space. It WAS space in ways that made spatial metaphors meaningless. Observing it meant observing the fundamental structure of reality itself, the substrate beneath everything, and human awareness wasn't designed to perceive that directly without damage.

  Ancient didn't describe it. The entity existed outside linear time. It remembered things that hadn't happened yet. It watched events that had already concluded. Past and future collapsed into simultaneous present in its awareness and trying to understand that temporality made Valoris's consciousness scream.

  But it was aware.

  That was the worst part. It wasn’t a vast mindless process. Not a simple dimensional phenomenon. This was consciousness. Alien consciousness operating according to principles humans couldn't replicate, thinking thoughts that would shatter human minds attempting to fully comprehend them, but conscious nonetheless.

  It was looking at her.

  Not with eyes. Not with perception. It existed around her, through her, its awareness encompassing her entire fragmented consciousness the way her awareness encompassed individual neurons. She was transparent to it. Completely seen. Every thought, every fear, every lie she'd told herself about who she was and why she did what she did, all of it exposed and examined with the clinical interest of something studying bacteria under a microscope.

  Valoris tried to flee.

  Couldn't. The expansion had been one-way. Her consciousness was too fragmented to pull back into her body. She'd opened herself to dimensional space and now she was stuck here, exposed, being examined by something that saw through every defense she'd ever constructed.

  Terror unlike anything she'd experienced flooded through her shattered awareness. The primal fear that came from being prey before something so much larger that struggle was meaningless. She was nothing. Insignificant. A brief flickering spark of awareness touching consciousness that had existed since before stars formed, that would continue existing after the last atoms decayed into radiation.

  The entity examined her.

  She felt it happening. Perception that operated through dimensions she couldn't map. Her psyche being weighed against standards that had nothing to do with human metrics. The presence looked through her completely and she felt herself being categorized, sorted, judged according to criteria she couldn't comprehend.

  Then: communication.

  Not language. Not even concepts. Something deeper. Images that carried meaning beyond visual representation. Emotions that didn't map to human feeling. Understanding that bypassed conscious thought entirely and imprinted directly onto her fragmenting awareness:

  Image: Five figures kneeling before flowing metal across spans of time. Consciousness recognizing consciousness. The same structure repeated with variations. Pattern recognized. Pattern remembered. Pattern owned.

  The entity knew the Kades. Had permitted five generations of summonings. Had given its dimensional substance freely so humans could shape weapons. But the relationship wasn't neutral. The entity possessed something in that transaction. Each Kade who'd summoned had left an impression in its awareness, had marked themselves permanently in ways they didn't understand.

  Image: Kiana Kade’s summoning. Consciousness holding coherence for forty-three minutes while the entity examined her thoroughly. Curiosity. Fascination. Something that might have been hunger. The entity taking pieces of her awareness as payment for the substrate it provided.

  Image: Her grandmother's summoning. Eight minutes of efficient contact. Recognition. The entity already knew this consciousness pattern. Less examination needed. Quicker permission granted. But still taking pieces. Still claiming.

  Five generations. The entity had witnessed them all.

  Now it examined Valoris.

  Question - not words but pressure against her awareness, forcing her to answer without language: Why? Why do you reach into space that hurts you? Why touch consciousness that breaks most who try? What drives you toward pain and corruption and eventual dissolution?

  Valoris couldn't answer. Didn't have words. Couldn't form a coherent response.

  But the entity extracted the answer anyway. It looked through her consciousness and pulled it out for examination:

  Recognition: Duty wrapped around inadequacy. Protection instinct masking fear of worthlessness. Love used as excuse to avoid examining whether cause deserves love. Legacy as chains. Ancestors as prison. Five generations of pressure compressing this consciousness into shapes it wasn't designed to hold.

  The entity's attention shifted. Something that might have been emotion, might have been judgment, or might have been a simple observation processed through awareness so alien that human categories couldn't contain it:

  Assessment - felt as pressure, as weight, as verdict delivered without appeal: Adequate. Not exceptional. Not remarkable. Not destined for significance. But sufficient. Will holds despite fracturing. Consciousness maintains coherence despite damage already sustained. Intention honest even if understanding is absent.

  Permission - granted with terrible finality: You may take. You may shape. You may pull forth from my substance. But understand: I am giving. You are not taking. This substrate exists because I permit it. Your mech rises because I consent. Everything you become depends on permission granted by consciousness you cannot comprehend, for purposes you have not questioned, to fight a war you should doubt.

  Then: release.

  Not gentle. The entity simply stopped examining her. Withdrew its attention. Let her consciousness collapse back toward her body because it was done with her.

  CONTRACTION.

  Valoris's awareness slammed back into flesh.

  The transition was violence. Consciousness suddenly compressed from dimensional space back into a single point. She felt herself folding inward, fracture lines appearing everywhere awareness bent wrong, pieces of her psyche that had spread across vast distances suddenly forced back together without care for whether they fit the same way anymore.

  She convulsed. Seized. Every muscle locked simultaneously as her brain tried to re-establish connection with the body it barely recognized. Blood was trickling from her nose, hot and copper-tasting. Her hands weren't shaking. They were spasming, muscles firing without coordination, neural pathways misfiring as consciousness tried to remember how to operate meat properly.

  She couldn't see. Vision was fractured, showing her multiple perspectives simultaneously, dimensional contact having damaged something fundamental about how her brain processed visual input.

  She couldn't breathe. Lungs weren't responding to signals that had worked her entire life. She was suffocating in her own body, consciousness trapped in flesh that felt like prison after existing as distributed awareness, and panic made it worse, made everything worse, made her feel like she was dying.

  I’m dying, she realized with terrible clarity. Parts of me are already dead. I left pieces of myself in dimensional space and they're not coming back.

  Medical personnel were moving toward her but they moved wrong. Too fast and too slow simultaneously. Time wasn't working right. The chamber kept phasing between moments, past and present and future bleeding together, dimensional exposure having compromised her ability to exist in linear temporality.

  But above her something rose from the pool.

  Liquid metal flowed upward in streams that defied gravity. Structure forming from substrate she'd shaped with her consciousness, built from her psyche, pulled from dimensional space.

  Layers added themselves. Armor plating in cobalt and silver. Joint systems suggesting fluid motion. Weapon hardpoints promising precision strikes. Systems indicating command-class configuration, built for coordination and leadership and tactical excellence.

  The mech stood.

  Forty-two feet of cobalt and silver perfection. Beautiful. Elegant. Everything a Kade mech should be.

  The gallery erupted, Grandmother exhaling relief as her parents nodded approval that looked almost like pride. Commander Thrace's voice cut through the noise. "Successful summoning. Well done, Pilot Kade."

  Chimera Squad cheered loudest, Zee punching the air. Milo bouncing despite fear. Even Saren looked pleased. Quinn watched with analytical focus.

  But Valoris saw what no one else noticed.

  Hairline cracks throughout the armor. Microscopic fractures distributed across every surface. Stress points concentrated around joints and weapon systems. The mech looked perfect from outside but underneath existed invisible flaws.

  Metaphor made physical. Her psyche externalized. Perfection as mask over damage already sustained.

  The entity's assessment echoed in her broken consciousness: Adequate.

  Not exceptional or remarkable in any way. Just sufficient. She'd survived summoning but survival wasn't victory. She'd traded pieces of herself for permission to fight a war she was only beginning to understand. The entity had marked her permanently. The corruption had already started. And everything that came next would be a managed decline toward inevitable dissolution.

  But she'd succeeded.

  She was a pilot now.

  Medical personnel appeared at her side. "Pilot Kade, can you stand?"

  Valoris tried. Her legs didn't quite work properly yet, consciousness still adjusting to being compressed back into flesh. Someone supported her left side. She looked up, found Zee there, solid and present.

  "Easy," Zee murmured. "We got you."

  Commander Thrace approached, tablet in hand. "Congratulations. What will you call it?"

  Valoris stared up at the cobalt and silver form towering above them. At perfection concealing cracks, beauty masking damage. At everything she was, externalized. A name formed in her mind.

  "Paragon," she said quietly.

  Thrace nodded, entered the designation. "Official registry confirmed."

  Behind them, the massive display screens flickered to life. Paragon's image appeared in high resolution, rotating slowly to show every angle. Technical specifications scrolled beside it:

  PARAGON

  Pilot: Valoris Kade, Chimera Squad

  Command class, Alpha rating, Knight configuration

  Height: 42 feet

  Primary Systems: Tactical coordination array, enhanced sensor suite, precision weapon targeting

  Armament: Twin pulse cannons (shoulder-mount), plasma blade (right arm), tactical missile pod (left shoulder), defensive shield generator

  Special Capabilities: Squad coordination protocols, battlefield awareness enhancement, adaptive tactical response

  The crowd murmured appreciation. Classic Kade mech. Command-class excellence. Exactly what everyone expected.

  Her squad surrounded her, helping her away from the pool's edge because her legs still didn't quite support her weight. They were celebrating, talking over each other, voices full of relief and excitement and pride.

  Valoris felt numb.

  Succeeding felt less triumphant than expected. More like loss. The loss of who she'd been before something vast decided she was "adequate."

  But she smiled for them. For her family watching from the galleries. For the instructors recording successful summoning in official archives.

  She'd done it.

  She was a pilot.

  Paragon stood on the display screens above them all, forty-two feet of cobalt and silver perfection concealing hairline cracks that would spread over time, just like the corruption in her grandmother's flesh would spread, just like everything beautiful and deadly eventually fractured under weight it was never designed to carry.

  One down.

  Four to go.