The wind howled like a wounded beast, dragging bitter sand across the endless stretch of ash-colored plains. Aera stood at the front of the convoy, her coat flapping behind her, eyes squinting against the dusk light. Behind her, repurposed military transports rumbled forward—silent except for the grind of metal and the soft murmur of tired soldiers.
It had been nineteen days since they left Kael's bastion.
Nineteen days of moving across forgotten roads, broken towns, and the skeletons of a world still on fire. The Dezune Empire's shadow stretched long, but here, out in the wind-blasted reaches of neutral ground, the war felt distant. Or maybe it had just taken a different shape.
The journey had not been easy. Supplies ran low faster than predicted. The terrain was harsher than maps suggested. They had to barter with desert nomads, avoid patrolling recon drones, and navigate toxic ruins marked with old war sigils. But worse than all of it—was the silence that settled at night. The kind that reminded them how far they were from everything they knew.
Yet somehow, they still moved.
Vanguard Six and Echo Nine—two squads forged from different steel, still marching under Aera's banner.
But not as one. Not yet.
They moved like two limbs from different bodies. Effective, yes. Loyal, yes. But unified? Not even close.
And Aera felt it in every decision she made. The hesitation. The second glances. The invisible wall between soldiers who had bled on different soil.
That night, they made camp in the crumbled remains of an old transit hub. Aera stood in the center of the firelight, gazing around the circle of worn faces—some familiar, some still hardened with suspicion.
She stepped forward.
"I'm not Kael Riven," she began.
A few smirks. A few looks cast downward. One or two nods.
"I don't see the world in numbers and odds. I don't read your thoughts off some glowing lens." She pointed to her chest. "I feel it here. The tension between us. The weight we all carry. I see it in the way you eat, the way you speak. You're not one squad. You're two waiting to fall apart."
Silence.
Elian stood nearby, arms folded. He didn't interrupt.
"So I'll make this simple," Aera continued. "We either become one—truly one—or we won't survive what's coming."
She turned to the soldiers of Echo Nine. "You're brilliant in urban maneuvering. You strike with speed and precision. You think fast."
Then to Vanguard Six. "And you hold the line when the world shakes. You don't break. You endure."
"You complement each other more than you realize. But you're still fighting like strangers. So starting tonight, we're not Echo or Vanguard anymore."
She paused, letting the moment breathe.
"We are Dawnbreaker. One unit. One name. One banner."
Someone scoffed. Another soldier muttered something under his breath.
Aera's gaze snapped to them. "You don't have to like it. You just have to understand. The enemy out there doesn't care who you trained with. They won't ask what patch you wear. When the bullets fly, you'll want to know the person beside you isn't just a squadmate."
She stepped forward, voice softening. "You'll want to know they're your brother. Your sister. Your family."
No one responded. But something shifted. A subtle thing.
Later that night, around the campfire, the first soldier from Vanguard passed a drink to a soldier from Echo.
It wasn't much.
But it was a start.