Now, you’ll hear stories told in the bright light of day, polished up for parades and recruitment posters. Stories of heroes, clean and simple. But this ain’t one of those.
This is a story for the quiet hours, for when the fire’s burned down to embers and the world outside is holding its breath.
It’s a story about what honor costs, and what happens when the truth gets buried so deep you have to dig it up with your own two hands, even if it means burying yourself first. It begins in a place built to feel holy and terrifying all at once: a military courtroom in Virginia.
The air in there is always the same—cold, tasting of metal and floor wax, thick with the weight of judgment. Fluorescent lights, the color of skim milk, hummed a low, constant note overhead, stripping the color from everything.
They bleached the rows of dress uniforms, the worried faces of family, the hungry eyes of the press.
Every person in that room was a statue, waiting for the hammer to fall. And at the defendant’s table, Commander Talia Reev stood like she was carved from the same granite as the courthouse steps. Her service whites were so crisp they could’ve cut you, her shoulders set in a line so straight it seemed to defy gravity.
Hands clasped behind her back, military perfect.
You’d have to look close, real close, to see the measured rise and fall of her chest, the slow, deliberate rhythm of her breath. Against that white uniform, the Medal of Honor was a shock of gold and blue, the star catching the harsh light.
It was the highest honor this country can give, a testament to a single night of impossible courage. And in that cold, sterile room, it was about to be taken away.
Presiding over it all was Judge Harold Beckett.
He sat elevated, a man wrapped in the black robes of authority, but it was more than the robes. He wore his power like a second skin. His gray hair was a silver helmet, combed back with a precision that allowed no single strand to be out of place.
His face was a mask of professional disinterest, his fingers steady as he turned the page of the statement he was about to read.
This was a man who had ended careers, shattered families, and never, not once, had it cost him a moment of sleep. He was a pillar of the system, and the system, he believed, was always right.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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