Marcus couldn't ignore it.
His investigation eventually brought him to Sergeant Drevan, a soldier using his authority to extort merchants.
Marcus confronted him.
Drevan was arrested.
But the arrest revealed something far worse.
Drevan wasn't acting alone.
There were names above him.
Payments.
Hidden ledgers.
Officials who were quietly protecting the men responsible.
And among the records was the name of Captain Valrose.
Marcus brought the evidence to his superiors expecting justice.
Instead, he was warned.
The message was clear:
Stop digging.
Marcus refused.
With the military unwilling—or unable—to confront its own corruption, Marcus found himself caught between the oath he had sworn and the institution he had sworn to serve.
Eventually, he walked away.
Not because he stopped believing in Askan.
Because he still believed in it.
He simply no longer believed that the people wearing its uniform could always be trusted to uphold its ideals.
Marcus disappeared into the shadows with a young recruit named Rellin Vane.
Rellin was the son of Jarron.
The revelation changed everything.
Jarron had unknowingly inspired both men to serve Askan.
Now Marcus found himself becoming for Rellin what Jarron had once been for him.
A mentor.
A protector.
A reminder of what the uniform was supposed to mean.
Together, Marcus, Rellin, and Marcus's oldest friend Lipton Tealeaf began investigating the corruption from outside the military.
Their investigation led them to an informant named Hector Shade, a former criminal associate who knew how to move through the city's underworld.
Hector uncovered something far larger than simple military corruption.
Money was being funneled through an establishment known as the Silver Curtain.
Large sums.
Far too large to be simple bribes.
Hidden transactions bore the mark of an ouroboros—a symbol suggesting approval from someone far higher than the soldiers Marcus had originally investigated.
Then came the name.
The Keeper.
No face.
No rank.
No known identity.
Only a name appearing above the network Marcus had spent months uncovering.
The investigation had reached the point where Marcus could no longer tell where military corruption ended and something much larger began.
The Silver Curtain contained a hidden vault.
The vault supposedly held evidence, money, and secrets capable of exposing the entire operation.
Marcus intended to break into it.
Then he stopped.
Not because he had lost his nerve.
Because he realized something.
He had spent his entire life trying to protect Askan.
He had believed the answer was always somewhere ahead—a corrupt soldier to arrest, a crooked officer to expose, another criminal to bring to justice.
But now Marcus was staring at something far larger.
Something that might reach into places he couldn't see.
So the investigation remains unfinished.
The Silver Curtain still stands.
The Keeper remains hidden.
Captain Valrose's true allegiance remains uncertain.
And somewhere within Askan, there are still soldiers who remember the oath.
Marcus is one of them.
He simply no longer wears the uniform.
And if the day comes when Askan needs him again, Marcus will have to decide whether the oath belonged to the military...
Or whether it belonged to the people all along.
