PART 1

Chapter 1: The Bird and the Bravado

The sun hung low over Fort Resolute, a bleeding wound in the sky that stained the horizon with streaks of violent gold and red. It was a dry heat, the kind that sucked the moisture right out of your eyes. A gust of wind tore through the camp, lifting sheets of red sand and dry leaves, carrying the sharp, metallic tang of copper and old sweat.

Across the wide-open expanse of the training grounds, a line of candidates stretched shoulder-to-shoulder.

This wasn’t boot camp. This was the grinder for the elite. Marines, Rangers, SEAL hopefuls, and a handful of Air Force PJs stood in the dust. They all wore that hardened, alert look of men trained to be dangerous—the “thousand-yard stare” practiced in the mirror. It was a look that told the world, Do not underestimate me.

Yet, among the wall of muscle and camouflage, one figure drew attention for all the wrong reasons.

She was smaller than the rest. Slight. Lean. Her build was more wiry than muscular, like a climber or a gymnast. But her presence was magnetic, drawing eyes without demanding them.

A dark gray hoodie was pulled low over her head, casting a deep shadow across her face. Even without seeing her features, something about the way she stood—a mix of absolute stillness and coiled readiness—made the other candidates uneasy. It was the stillness of a predator, not prey.

And then, there was the tattoo.

Peeking from beneath her left sleeve, ink-black on pale skin, was a raven perched on a broken branch. It wasn’t a blurry prison tat; it was sharp, intricate work. To some, it was a strange flourish—artistic, perhaps symbolic of rebellion or bad poetry.

To others, it was an easy target.

“Hey, hood girl,” a Marine Corporal barked, his voice sharp with the kind of mockery that usually gets a laugh in the barracks. He stood three heads taller than her, a slab of beef with a high-and-tight haircut. “Nice bird tattoo. What is that, Team Emo?”

A few others chuckled, nudging each other. The tension of the lineup needed a release, and she was the perfect victim.

She didn’t react. Not a twitch.

Another candidate, a guy with the cocky grin of a man who’s never been punched in the mouth hard enough, leaned closer. “Let me guess. It’s supposed to be intimidating, right? Beware the quiet ones. Or maybe you just drew it in marker in art class.”

A ripple of laughter went down the line.

Her hands rested calmly at her sides. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t raise her eyes. She just existed, unshaken, like a rock in a stream while the water rushed around her.

Chapter 2: The Recognition

Across the yard, the two-story administration building cast a long, jagged shadow over the dirt. From the second-floor window, Commander Jonathan Hail watched, his binoculars resting against his chest.

Hail was a legend in the community, though he’d never admit it. A SEAL officer with two combat deployments as a sniper team lead under his belt, he was decorated with awards most candidates had only read about in books. Broad-shouldered, hair slightly gray at the temples, with eyes that had witnessed too much death to be surprised by anything, Hail had seen countless new recruits.

Most tried to assert themselves with noise. Some with bravado. Others with aggression.

But the quiet ones? The ones who endured mockery without a twitch? Those were the ones worth watching.

“Who is she?” Hail muttered to himself.

The line shifted below him. Murmurs were spreading like wildfire. No one recognized her. No branch insignias marked her sleeves. She had arrived silently, as if materializing from the wind itself.

The raven tattoo was what lit the fire in the candidates’ minds. That, and her composure.

“You think she can even handle the ruck march?” someone muttered down in the line. “Who let her in here?” another replied.

The wind lifted again, stirring her hood slightly.

Finally, Hail walked out of the building and toward the line. His presence was commanding but calm. As he approached, the candidates stiffened instinctively. Hail’s reputation preceded him: grueling field tests, impossible standards, and a terrifying intuition for identifying danger.

“Welcome to Advanced Joint Marksmanship Qualification,” Hail’s voice rang across the yard, cutting through the chatter like a knife. “If you think you’re good, you’re not. If you think you’re elite, you’re wrong.”

He walked slowly down the line, inspecting gear with a critical eye.

“If you think you’re ready,” he let his gaze sweep over the group, “we’ll see. Eyes forward. Spine stiff. Breathing measured.”

Then, his eyes locked on her.

The hooded girl. Small. Quiet. Unnervingly still. She radiated a presence he couldn’t ignore. It felt like standing next to a high-voltage line—you could feel the hum in the air.

“Candidate,” he said, stepping into her personal space. His voice was calm, but it carried an authority that made the men around her shift in their boots.

“What’s your name?”

For the first time, her voice broke the silence. It was calm, even, professional. Not a trace of fear. “Clarissa Ward, sir.”

The men glanced at each other. Unknown name. Unknown origin.

“Perfect,” Hail nodded. “Remove the hood.”

The line seemed to hold its breath. The Corporal smirked, expecting a mess.

Slowly, deliberately, Clarissa lifted the hood.

Her gray eyes met Hail’s directly. They were unflinching, calm, measured, almost predatory in their focus. With the fabric gone, the tattoo was fully revealed.

Hail’s heart skipped a beat.

It was no ordinary raven. He had seen such insignias only in classified contexts, in files that were never supposed to be shared outside the highest levels of operations—Pentagon sub-basement stuff. This was a mark reserved for a “Ghost” unit, a team whose very existence was whispered about in briefings and highly restricted field reports.

Laughter from the line died instantly. The candidates’ eyes widened, uncertainty creeping in. A few swallowed hard. The Corporal who had mocked her stepped back instinctively. The others didn’t know why, but instinct told them they had just crossed into dangerous territory.

Hail’s jaw tightened. He looked at her, really looked at her, and saw the miles behind her eyes.

“Ward,” Hail said, his voice barely audible over the wind. “Previous assignment?”

She answered, voice steady, emotionless. “Sir. That’s need-to-know.”

A shiver went through the group. No one laughed. No one moved.

“Understood,” Hail said. He took a half-step back, internally calculating. She was calm. She was small. And yet, the gravity of her presence pulled him in like a magnet.

She wasn’t here to learn. She was here to sharpen a blade that was already razor-sharp.

PART 2

Chapter 3: The First Shot

The first exercise of the day was a live-fire evaluation. It was standard procedure, designed to weed out the nervous wrecks from the operators.

Candidates moved toward their positions, checking bolts, adjusting optics. But the mockery from before had vanished entirely. Whispers passed quietly between men who suddenly realized the girl they judged as fragile might actually be the wolf in the room.

Hail stood back, arms crossed, studying her. Every micro-expression. Every slight shift of weight. Every breath.

She moved deliberately. Economically.

Most candidates fidgeted. They rolled their shoulders, cracked their necks, tapped their magazines. Clarissa did none of that. She simply stood at her lane, rifle resting on the barrier, staring downrange.

“Range is hot!” the Range Safety Officer bellowed.

The first shots rang out across Fort Resolute’s training grounds, sharp and startling, echoing off distant hills. The air immediately smelled of hot gunpowder and dust.

Clarissa Ward moved differently.

While others fumbled with grips, adjusted sights, and cursed under their breath at the crosswind, she held herself with an eerie calm. Her gray eyes scanned the field, measuring distance, wind, humidity, trajectory. Her hands, light and steady, positioned the rifle with deliberate precision, almost as if the weapon were an extension of her biological form.

“Who is that?” a Marine muttered, stepping back from his firing lane to watch her. “She’s… different. Watch her.”

The SEAL candidate who had mocked her earlier—the one with the smirk—clenched his jaw. “I don’t care how small she is. She’s precise. Way too precise for a rookie.”

Clarissa’s rifle rose. The stock welded to her cheek.

The wind picked up, rattling the range markers. A dust devil swirled across the 800-yard line. Any normal shooter would wait.

Clarissa didn’t wait.

Crack.

One shot. Center mass. The steel target rang sharply, a high-pitched ping that carried over the gunfire.

Crack.

Another shot. Bullseye. The steel spun on its chain.

The SEAL candidate’s smirk faltered. The Marine whispering nearby sucked in a breath. “She’s hitting every target. Every. Single. One.”

Clarissa didn’t glance up. She didn’t check her spotter scope. She didn’t react to the whispers. She cycled the bolt with a fluid motion that looked like water flowing over a rock.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Three targets at varying distances—400, 600, 800 yards. Three hits. rapid fire.

She had been here before. Not in a classroom, not in a simulated exercise, but in environments far more dangerous, where one misstep meant a closed-casket funeral.

Commander Hail felt the hair on his arms stand up. The insignia—the raven—wasn’t just ink. It was a certification of lethality. She was a sniper, elite beyond typical SEAL standards, someone trained for covert operations the public would never hear about.

“Previous assignment,” Hail muttered under his breath again, watching her transition to a kneeling position. “God help us.”

The targets rotated, forcing candidates to shift rapidly from one point to another. Most stumbled, adjusting sights, breathing unevenly, panic creeping into their movements as the timer ticked down.

Clarissa flowed.

It was almost hypnotic. She dropped to a knee, rifle up, fire. She went prone, rifle up, fire.

Then came the last target. The “Widowmaker.” It was set at 1,200 yards, barely visible in the slanting sunlight, obscured by heat shimmer.

Candidates squinted, struggling to even find it in their scopes.

Hail saw Clarissa pause for a fraction of a second. She tilted her head, feeling the wind on her cheek. A faint flicker of a smile touched her lips—almost imperceptible.

She knew exactly where the target would move in the briefest window of wind. She knew the rotation of the earth. She knew the humidity.

Her finger squeezed the trigger.

Boom.

The shot cracked, splitting the air heavier than the others.

Two seconds of silence.

PING.

The distant steel target rang perfectly.

A murmur ran through the line. Some candidates stepped back, unnerved. A few looked at each other in disbelief. The SEAL candidate who had mocked her couldn’t hide his astonishment.

“How?” he whispered. “How did she… with that wind?”

Clarissa lowered the rifle slowly. She stood up, cleared the chamber, and placed the weapon on the rack. She turned, her eyes sweeping across the candidates. There was no arrogance. No “I told you so.” Just quiet focus.

Chapter 4: The Ghost in the Woods

The forested terrain beyond the range hinted at exercises yet to come. Hail knew the real test wasn’t shooting paper and steel; it was the woods.

“Alright, listen up!” Hail barked, breaking the trance the candidates had fallen into. “Range time is over. Gear up. We’re moving to the ambush course. You have ten minutes.”

As the group scrambled to pack their rucks, Hail watched Clarissa. She was already done. Her pack was high on her shoulders, straps taped down to prevent noise.

“She’s a ghost,” a young candidate whispered, his voice trembling slightly. “She doesn’t even look real.”

Hail approached the group. “Movement to contact. You will be hunted. You will be engaged. If you are spotted, you are dead. Move out.”

The forest beyond Fort Resolute stretched like a living labyrinth. Towering pines and dense underbrush swallowed the sunlight, casting mottled shadows across the ground.

The candidates moved cautiously, boots crunching on dead leaves. Sweat trickled down their temples. Every sound—the snapping of a twig, the rustle of a leaf—seemed amplified.

Clarissa Ward moved differently.

She didn’t run. She didn’t dash. She glided.

Her steps were silent, rolling heel-to-toe, placing her feet where the others wouldn’t think to look—on hard roots, on moss patches. Her eyes scanned constantly, flicking from shadow to shadow, analyzing, calculating.

Hail followed from a distance, moving parallel to the group. He watched her merge with the treeline. One second she was there, the next she was just a shadow among shadows.

The group had been tasked with a simulated ambush scenario. Targets were scattered, but there were also “aggressors”—instructors in Ghillie suits hiding in the brush.

Most candidates were tense, rushing, their heads on swivels but seeing nothing.

Clarissa crouched behind a fallen log. The raven tattoo peaked from beneath her sleeve as she adjusted her grip.

Suddenly, she froze.

The others didn’t notice it. They kept walking.

But Hail saw it. A branch snapped behind her—soft, almost inaudible. A squirrel? No. Too heavy.

Clarissa turned slightly, eyes narrowing. She didn’t panic. She didn’t raise her rifle blindly. She waited.

Patience was a weapon she wielded expertly.

Seconds later, a target popped into view—a painted metal plate swinging from a tree branch, triggered by a tripwire the point man had missed.

Before the point man could even raise his weapon, Clarissa’s rifle barked.

Pop.

The target spun.

“Contact front!” the point man yelled, late.

“Already down,” Clarissa said softly. She was already moving to the next cover.

The SEAL candidate—let’s call him Miller—was walking point now, trying to regain his dignity. He signaled for the group to move left.

Clarissa hissed. A sharp, cutting sound.

Miller stopped, looking back at her, annoyed. “What?” he mouthed.

She pointed to the ground, ten feet in front of him. A faint glint of fishing line in the dappled light. A booby trap.

Miller froze. If he had taken two more steps, he would have triggered a simulated claymore. He looked back at her, his face draining of color. She had saved him from a humiliating “death.”

She didn’t gloat. She just gestured for him to go around.

“God,” muttered a Marine, his voice low. “She sees everything.”

Miller clenched his jaw, fists tightening around his rifle. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he admitted under his breath. “She’s predicting the terrain.”

Clarissa moved forward, crouching low. The forest seemed to bend around her. She wasn’t fighting the environment; she was part of it.

Hail watched, fascinated. This wasn’t teaching. This was an exhibition. Clarissa Ward was showing them what the difference between “qualified” and “lethal” really looked like.

And the sun was only just beginning to set. The real darkness was yet to come.

Chapter 5: The Shadow Leader

The sun dipped below the tree line, casting the forest into a bruised twilight of purple and gray. The temperature plummeted, a hallmark of the high desert, sucking the heat out of sweat-soaked uniforms.

The ambush exercise had evolved. It was no longer a simple “walk and shoot.” It was a test of endurance and psychological breaking points. The candidates were tired. Their rucksacks, loaded with sixty pounds of gear, dug into their traps. Hydration bladders were running dry.

“Contact left! Contact left!”

The shout tore through the silence. Yellow smoke popped from the brush—a simulated chemical attack mixed with aggression. Instructors posing as enemy combatants opened fire with Simunition rounds—paint-filled plastic bullets that hit with enough force to leave welts and break skin.

Chaos erupted.

“Return fire! Get off the X!” Miller screamed, diving behind a cluster of rocks. He was trying to lead, but his voice was thin, edged with panic. The formation broke. Two candidates scrambled the wrong way, exposing their flanks.

Paint rounds splattered against the trees, hissing like angry hornets.

Clarissa didn’t scream. She didn’t dive. She flowed.

She slid into the depression of a dried creek bed, her profile disappearing instantly. While the men shouted conflicting orders, stepping over each other’s comms, she was working.

She tapped the shoulder of the candidate nearest to her—a terrified Ranger hopeful who had frozen up. She didn’t speak; she just pointed. Suppressing fire. Ten o’clock. Tree line.

He looked at her, saw the absolute zero in her gray eyes, and obeyed without question. He opened up, pouring rounds into the brush.

Clarissa moved. She flanked the enemy position while the Ranger kept their heads down. She moved like liquid mercury, silent and deadly.

Miller was pinned down, rounds slapping the rock inches from his face. “I can’t get a line of sight!” he yelled.

Suddenly, the enemy fire stopped.

Three rapid shots rang out from the left flank. Pop. Pop. Pop.

“Threat neutralized,” Clarissa’s voice came over the comms. Calm. Bored, even. “Push forward.”

Miller peered over the rock. Three silhouettes in the distance were raising their hands, signaling they were “dead.” Clarissa was already standing over them, checking their perimeter.

Hail, watching from a concealed observation post, felt a chill that had nothing to do with the dropping temperature.

He had seen this before. In the teams, they called it “battlefield geometry.” Most soldiers saw the fight in front of them. Elite operators saw the fight from above, a mental map of angles and vectors. Clarissa saw the map.

She wasn’t just participating in the ambush; she was orchestrating it.

As the squad regrouped, the dynamic had shifted physically. They didn’t look to Miller for the next command. They looked to the small figure in the hoodie, the one cleaning dirt off her rifle with steady hands.

Miller walked up to her. He looked like he wanted to say something—maybe apologize, maybe challenge her—but he just swallowed hard.

“What’s next?” he asked, his voice humbled.

Clarissa didn’t look up. She adjusted her pack straps. “We extract. Stay low. Don’t make noise. And Miller?”

“Yeah?”

She looked at him then, the raven tattoo stark against her skin in the fading light. “Check your six. You almost took a round to the kidney back there.”

Miller nodded, pale. “Roger that.”

Chapter 6: The Fog of War

By late evening, the forest had transformed. A cold mist began rising from the ground, curling around tree trunks like spectral fingers. It hugged the underbrush, reducing visibility to less than twenty feet.

This was the “Malfunction Phase.”

Hail had rigged the scenario. He wanted to see what happened when technology failed.

“Comms are down!” a candidate whispered frantically. “I’m getting nothing but static.”

“Night vision is washed out,” another cursed, tapping his NVGs. “The mist is reflecting the IR. I can’t see a damn thing.”

They were blind. Deaf. Tired. And they were in the kill zone.

Clarissa Ward didn’t rely on the tech. She stripped her NVGs off her helmet and let her eyes adjust to the gloom. She sniffed the air.

The smell of ozone. The faint crunch of a boot on gravel.

“Hold,” she whispered. It wasn’t a command; it was a vibration in the air.

The entire squad froze.

“I don’t see anything,” Miller hissed.

“Wait,” Clarissa breathed.

She raised her rifle. She wasn’t aiming with optics; she was aiming with instinct. She tracked a sound no one else could hear—the slide of fabric against bark.

A shadow detached itself from a pine tree forty yards away. A simulated sniper, aiming directly at the group’s center.

Clarissa fired.

The muzzle flash lit up the mist for a microsecond, illuminating the raven on her arm like a demonic sigil.

Clang.

The steel plate strapped to the instructor’s chest rang out. A kill shot. In near-zero visibility. Without night vision.

The squad gasped.

“How…” Miller started, but stopped. There was no point asking how anymore.

But the test wasn’t over. A simulated grenade—a flash-bang simulator—rolled into the clearing where the group had huddled.

It was a “death trap.” In a real scenario, they were all dead. Panic surged. Men scrambled, tripping over roots, trying to get away from the blast radius.

Clarissa didn’t scramble.

Her eyes widened—a fraction. A twitch.

She moved faster than thought. She didn’t run away; she ran toward the threat. In one fluid motion, she scooped up the simulator and hurled it into a deep ravine to their right.

BOOM.

The explosion rocked the ground, flashing white light up the ravine walls. But the squad was safe.

Silence followed. Heavy. Profound.

“She’s insane,” a candidate muttered, wiping dirt from his face. “She’s actually insane.”

“That’s not insanity,” Miller said quietly, staring at her back. “That’s reflex. You don’t learn that in Basic. You don’t learn that in Ranger School.”

Clarissa was already scanning the perimeter again, rifle up. “Two targets remaining. Flanking left. Move.”

Hail, watching from his thermal scope up on the ridge, lowered the device. His hands were shaking slightly.

He realized then that this exercise was dangerous. Not for her—but for everyone else. She was operating at a tempo that invited lethal accidents because the others couldn’t keep up. She was a Ferrari in a convoy of tractors.

She was clearing the path, protecting them, leading them, and she hadn’t broken a sweat.

Chapter 7: The Extraction

The final leg of the course was the “Heavy Carry.”

The objective: Extract a “wounded” comrade—a 180-pound sandbag dummy—up a steep, scree-covered hill to a waiting truck.

It was the equalizer. It didn’t matter how well you could shoot if your legs gave out.

The squad was broken. Two men were limping. Miller was gasping for air, his chest heaving. They took turns carrying the dummy, but their pace had slowed to a crawl.

“We’re not gonna make the time hack,” a Marine groaned, dropping his end of the stretcher. “My legs are shot.”

“Pick it up,” Miller wheezed. “We fail if we stop.”

“I can’t,” the Marine spat. “I’m done.”

The group stalled. The morale was gone. They were cold, hungry, and defeated.

Clarissa walked to the front. She slung her rifle across her back.

“Give it to me,” she said.

“It’s two hundred pounds, Ward,” Miller said, shaking his head. “You weigh a buck-twenty soaking wet.”

She didn’t argue. She shoved the Marine aside, grabbed the shoulder straps of the dummy, and heaved.

With a grunt of pure, raw effort, she hoisted the dead weight onto her shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Her knees buckled for a second, shaking under the load.

Then, they locked.

She looked up the hill. The slope was brutal, a 45-degree incline of loose rock.

She took a step. Then another.

The raven tattoo on her forearm bulged as her muscles contracted, the veins in her neck popping. It wasn’t technique anymore. It was pure, unadulterated grit.

“Move,” she gritted out through clenched teeth.

Shamed, the men scrambled to surround her, taking up security positions.

She climbed. Every step was a battle. Her boots slipped on the shale, but she recovered, driving her legs like pistons. She was carrying nearly double her body weight if you counted her own gear.

The squad watched in awe. They stopped complaining. They stopped feeling their own pain. If she could do this, they had no excuse.

“almost there, Ward!” Miller yelled, finding a new reserve of energy. “Dig deep!”

She didn’t acknowledge him. She was in the “pain cave,” that mental space where the world narrows down to just the next step.

Ten yards. Five yards.

She crested the hill and dumped the dummy onto the bed of the waiting truck. She collapsed to her knees, gasping for air, sweat soaking through her hoodie.

“Time!” the instructor yelled. “Objective complete!”

The squad cheered. It was a ragged, exhausted sound, but it was real. They crowded around her, patting her back, offering water.

“You’re a machine, Ward,” the Marine who had quit said, looking at his boots. “I’m sorry. For… everything.”

Clarissa took a sip of water. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked up at them, her gray eyes tired but clear.

“Mission first,” she whispered. “Team always.”

Hail stepped out of the shadows of the truck. The moon was high now, bathing the training ground in silver light.

He walked up to the group. The men snapped to attention, but Clarissa stayed on one knee, catching her breath. Hail didn’t correct her.

“At ease,” Hail said softly.

He looked at the dummy, then at the hill, then at Clarissa.

“Ward,” he said.

She stood up slowly, wincing slightly. “Sir.”

“Report.”

“Objective secured. Team is intact. Casualties zero.”

Hail nodded. “And the threat assessment?”

“Low,” she said. “The terrain was the enemy. The opposition was… predictable.”

Miller laughed. A short, hysterical bark of a laugh. “Predictable. She called the ambush ‘predictable’.”

Hail turned to the group. “You men have witnessed something today. You saw what ‘elite’ actually looks like. It’s not about how much you can bench press. It’s not about how loud you can bark.”

He pointed at Clarissa.

“It’s about that. Absolute focus. Absolute will.”

Chapter 8: The Ghost Departs

The training ground was quiet. The candidates had been dismissed to the barracks, limping and humbled.

Clarissa sat on the tailgate of a Humvee, unlacing her boots. Her hoodie was off now, tied around her waist. She wore a simple black t-shirt. The raven tattoo was fully visible, dark and intricate.

Commander Hail approached her, holding two cups of coffee.

He handed one to her. She took it with a nod. “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re not a candidate, are you?” Hail asked. It wasn’t an accusation; it was a confirmation.

Clarissa took a sip, the steam rising into the cool night air. “I was ordered to audit the course. See if the new protocols were up to standard.”

Hail chuckled, shaking his head. “Audit? You demolished the course. You broke my candidates.”

“They needed breaking,” she said simply. “Better they break here than in the sandbox. That corporal… Miller. He has potential. But he was too loud. He needed to learn that silence is faster.”

“And the others?”

“They’ll survive. They learned to trust their eyes, not their egos.”

Hail leaned against the truck. “The Raven. That’s Task Force 121 isn’t it? Or is it the new spectral unit out of Virginia?”

Clarissa turned to him. Her expression was unreadable, a mask of perfect professional detachment.

“Sir,” she said, her voice dropping an octave. “That’s need-to-know.”

Hail smiled. A genuine smile of respect. “Right. Sorry I asked.”

She finished her coffee and tossed the cup into a bin. She hopped off the tailgate.

“My transport is here,” she said.

A black SUV with tinted windows and government plates rolled up the gravel drive. No lights. It just appeared.

Clarissa grabbed her ruck. She swung it over her shoulder as if it weighed nothing.

“Ward,” Hail called out as she reached for the door handle.

She paused. “Sir?”

“If you ever need a spotter…”

She smiled. A real smile this time. It made her look younger, human. “I work alone, Commander. But I’ll keep you in mind.”

She opened the door. The interior light didn’t turn on. She slid inside, and the vehicle pulled away, disappearing into the darkness of the desert night as quickly as it had arrived.

Hail stood there for a long time, listening to the wind whistle through the chain-link fence.

The next morning, the candidates lined up again. The mockery was gone. The bravado was gone. They stood in silence, eyes forward, spines stiff.

They looked at the empty spot where the small girl in the hoodie had stood.

Miller touched his own shoulder, remembering the way she had guided him out of the kill zone.

“Eyes forward,” Hail’s voice rang out. “Today we train. Today we try to be half as good as the ghost you met yesterday.”

“Hooyah,” the class roared.

And for the first time, they meant it.

The legend of the Raven would stay at Fort Resolute for years. The story of the girl who walked out of the mist, humiliated the toughest men in the military without saying a word, and vanished back into the shadows.

They had laughed at the tattoo. They had mocked the hood.

But in the end, they all wished they had just one ounce of the fire that burned inside Clarissa Ward.

The End.