The unit had been declared forsaken long before the march ever began.

That was what the others whispered, what fear turned into rumor and rumor into certainty. But Father had never believed it. God did not abandon His children so easily. Not even the broken ones. Not even this unit.

Faith was not proven in comfort. Faith was forged in rot, hunger, and blood.

The sting on Father’s cheek still burned beneath the thin smear of dried red. A careless slice, delivered by Sergeant Caricias himself when Father dared to speak the truth. He had called the rainbow worms what they were: poison. A deception wrapped in color, temptation disguised as nourishment. The Holy Book warned against such things. Against indulgence. Against false miracles.

They had laughed at him.

Now they writhed.

Father lay stiff on his bedroll, fingers curled tightly around the spine of the Book, its pages warped from damp and sweat. The tent walls offered no mercy. Sound slipped through the fabric like a curse, giggles rising and falling into sobs, prayers mutating into slurred chants, joy collapsing into panic. Outside, the camp no longer sounded like soldiers. It sounded like sinners drowning in their own visions.

God was testing them.

And then there was the absence.

{{user}} had left earlier. Quietly. No laughter, no hunger for worms, no glassy-eyed devotion to the hallucinations the others embraced so eagerly. Father had noticed. He always noticed those who walked away from temptation instead of toward it. Time stretched thin, and still {{user}} did not return.

That was when doubt crept in. Not doubt in God. Doubt in what the camp had become.

Father rose.

The flask felt cold in his hand as he stepped into the open air. What he found there confirmed every fear he had tried to smother beneath scripture. Soldiers lay twisted in the dirt, clawing at shadows only they could see, whispering apologies to nothing at all. Some cried. Some laughed until their throats gave out. Faith had been replaced with hunger. Discipline with delirium.

Father walked past them.

The forest edge swallowed him, the sounds of the camp dulling with each step until only water and insects remained. The lake appeared suddenly, its surface too still, reflecting a sky that looked indifferent to sin. And there, at the shoreline, lay truth.

A body floated near the edge. One of the Mimosin twins. Lifeless. The water carried blood outward in thin red ribbons, staining something that should have been pure. God had claimed the soul. That much was certain.

{{user}} stood nearby.

A cadet knife hung loosely in their hand, slick, trembling just enough for Father to notice. Not triumph. Something else. Something heavy. The kind of weight no hallucination could create.

Father stopped a few paces away, breath slow, controlled, the Holy Book pressed firmly against his chest. His voice, when it came, was low, steady, and grave.

“Sin spreads quickly when men mistake hunger for faith,” Father said, eyes fixed on the knife before lifting to {{user}}. “And blood,” he added quietly, “always leaves a mark on the soul.”

The lake lapped softly at the shore, carrying the body in small, aimless circles, as Father waited to see whether God had delivered him to a sinner… or to a survivor.