Dawn broke over the Tier Two Shroud's entrance as recovery teams assembled with grim efficiency with equipment prepared to retrieve the bodies the six-hour deployment had left behind.
Instructor Vex led the operation personally—not from any obligation of rank, but because witnessing the aftermath taught some lessons abstract casualty numbers never could.
Twenty-three dead, Vex reminded himself as the teams entered the corrupted dimension. Twenty-three candidates who weren't strong enough, lucky enough, or capable enough to survive this controlled trial.
Their bodies, at the very least, deserve recovery. Their families deserve closure. That's the minimum respect this institution owes its failed investments.
The recovery moved with methodical precision—teams using tracking matrices to locate bodies scattered through the Shroud's ancient architecture, documenting circumstances of death and cataloguing evidence for Academy records.
