“Satchel,” he said. His voice was steady. “Then we go home.”

Then silence.

No one argued. No one looked for a badge on his arm. They just followed.

He laughed. It was a sound like breaking glass.

They moved out at moonrise. The Tangled Wood was not a wood. It was a graveyard of old trenches, collapsed bunkers, and trees that had been shelled into white, jagged fangs. The gas came in low, yellow and lazy, hugging the ground like a waiting serpent. They wore no masks—there were none for children. They’d tied rags soaked in their own urine over their mouths. It was a lie of protection, but lies were the only currency they had.

“You want to lead, Gutter-rat?” Thorne’s voice was a wet rasp, half-phlegm, half-gravel. He tapped the three faded chevrons stitched onto his own tunic. “Then earn these. Not the ones your mummy sewed on before breakfast. These. ”

The Boy’s Brigade had only one true rank: the one you earned when you chose to blow the whistle instead of swallowing it.