My Stepbrother Attacked Me—At the Promotion Ceremony, the General Roared “She Just Lost the Baby!” The first thing I noticed wasn’t the applause; it was the weight of the new insignia warming under the general’s hand. Heat through brass through cloth through bone—like the sun finally touching a place that had learned to live in shade. He pinned it straight. We saluted. The hall answered with its own rising—hands, phones, a hundred small lights reflecting off a hundred small hopes. I found Daniel