Chapter 14: The Cost of Ground

　　The false victory along the Scarab River left a bitter taste, like ashes in Caden’s mouth. The Cockatrices had held the line, thanks to his warning, but the cost had been real. Two cadets from Violet’s squad were carried from the field with injuries that would take weeks to heal. The air, once charged with the frantic energy of a game, was now thick with the grim reality of a trial by combat. The line between simulation and sacrifice had been erased.

　　From his rocky perch, Caden watched the battle’s tempo shift. The large, set-piece engagements dissolved into a vicious, sprawling guerrilla war across the wooded valleys and rocky gorges of the training grounds. The Gryphon leadership, stung by the failure of their flanking maneuver, had adapted. They were no longer just trying to win the game; they were hunting.

　　He saw it in the patterns of their movements. Small, elite Gryphon units, led by Barlowe and others known for their unwavering loyalty to Command, began to operate with a new, predatory focus. They bypassed strongholds, ignored flags. Their objective was clear: isolate and eliminate Violet’s squad. The War Games had become a pretext for a sanctioned purge.

　　Caden’s role intensified. He was no longer just a source of tactical terrain advice; he was their early-warning system, their ghost in the machine. He spent the days in a state of hyper-vigilance, his body aching from the cold and immobility, his mind a map of moving pieces. He tracked the sun, noting how shadows lengthened across certain passes, creating avenues for hidden approach. He monitored the carrion birds circling over the battlefield, their patterns betraying the locations of the dead and the dying—and the killers who created them.

　　He communicated through a series of pre-arranged signals: a specific arrangement of stones left on a trail, a dead branch positioned in the crook of a tree. A language of silence and implication. When he saw a Gryphon hunter-killer team moving to cut off Violet’s retreat towards a supposed safe haven, he would signal the warning. When he identified a defensible position—a cave system he knew was not on the maps, a ridge with a single, easily held approach—he would signal the opportunity.

　　Violet and her marked ones moved like phantoms through the landscape, a testament to their trust in his unseen guidance. They abandoned the official objectives, playing a different game entirely: survival. They became experts in ambush and evasion, using the terrain as a weapon. Caden watched, his heart in his throat, as they turned the Gryphons’ aggression against them, luring pursuers into bogs and box canyons.

　　But the pressure was relentless. The Gryphons had numbers and resources. Violet’s squad was being worn down, their energy and supplies dwindling. Caden saw the fatigue etched on their faces even from a distance. He saw Violet’s limp become more pronounced, a sure sign her body was being pushed past its limits.

　　The breaking point came on the third day. A sudden, vicious squall swept down from the mountains, turning the world into a gray, sheeting misery of rain and wind. Visibility dropped to nothing. The eyeglass became useless. Caden was blind.

　　This was the moment he had feared. This was when the predators would strike, using the storm as cover.

　　He had to get closer. It was a catastrophic breach of his own safety protocol, but the thought of being unable to warn them, of hearing a single scream swallowed by the gale, was unbearable. He scrambled down from his ledge, his old bones protesting, his archivist’s hands torn by sharp rock. He moved through the lashing rain, a sodden, desperate ghost, guided only by his internal map and a rising tide of panic.

　　He found them in a small box canyon, just as he had feared. They were cornered. Barlowe and a dozen Gryphons had them pinned against a cliff face. The sounds of combat were brutal and short—the wet thud of impacts, grunts of pain, the crackle of magic stifled by the rain. Through the downpour, Caden saw Xaden, a whirlwind of controlled fury, holding the line. He saw Garrick, slumped against a rock, clutching a bleeding arm. And he saw Violet, standing back-to-back with Xaden, her small form looking impossibly fragile, her face a mask of rain and grim determination as she parried a blow from a cadet twice her size.

　　They were losing. They were seconds from being overrun.

　　Caden’s mind raced, discarding options. He was no fighter. He was a librarian. But he was a keeper of secrets. And he knew this canyon.

　　His eyes scanned the cliff face behind them. There. A dark, narrow fissure, almost invisible behind a curtain of ivy. An old water run-off, not on any map. It was a tight squeeze, but it led out. He had to tell them.

　　He cupped his hands around his mouth, the wind whipping his words away. He was too far. They couldn’t hear him.

　　Then, he saw it. Lying near the canyon entrance, half-submerged in a growing puddle, was a Gryphon cadet, unconscious or dead. And slung on his back was a wyvern-horn, the instrument used for signaling advances and retreats.

　　It was madness. It would reveal his position. It would be a death sentence.

　　He didn’t hesitate.

　　Caden ran, his feet slipping in the mud. He snatched up the horn, its cold metal a shock against his skin. He had no idea what the calls meant. But he knew one sound that was universal.

　　He put the horn to his lips and blew with all the air left in his old lungs.

　　The sound that emerged was not a clean, military note. It was a raw, ragged, desperate blast—the unmistakable sound of a warning, an alarm, a scream of pure urgency.

　　In the canyon, the fighting stuttered. Heads turned towards the sound.

　　It was all the distraction they needed.

　　Xaden roared a command. He and Violet broke contact, and as the Gryphons surged forward, the marked ones scrambled not away, but towards the cliff face. Xaden, with a final, mighty shove, pushed Violet into the fissure Caden had seen. He turned, a lone figure, prepared to hold the entrance against the tide.

　　Caden didn’t wait to see the outcome. He dropped the horn and ran, scrambling back up the rocky slope, the Gryphon shouts of fury echoing behind him. He had done it. He had given them a chance. The cost of that chance, he knew, would be his own ground. They would be hunting him now.

　　But as he fled into the storm, the image burned into his mind was not of the pursuing Gryphons. It was of Violet’s face in that final second, as she was pushed to safety. Her eyes had met his across the chaotic distance. And in them, he had not seen fear, or gratitude. He had seen a furious, blazing promise.

　　The fallen knight had blown his cover. The ghost had been seen. The war had just become personal.

　　Chapter 14 - End