<Previously on Donut Trumpet>

Donut Trumpet has only one wish—to be king.

Donut sets his sights on the King’s Medal at military school. Determined to crush that guy in a brutal marching drill, he charges into the challenge!

Burgers and Time-Leaps will carry Donut up the craziest staircase of his life!

……………………..


That day came all too suddenly.


The final marching drill before graduation was the toughest training at New York Military School. For a full week, we were to cross the mountains under the pretense of an enemy pursuit.


The stage: the White Mountains of New Hampshire—some of the most brutal terrain on the East Coast. More than a few cadets had lost their lives to landslides and storms.


I had made up my mind—I’d crush that musclehead Motts during this march.


Up to now, my Fake It Art and Time-Leaps had carried me to good grades.

But even those arts had finally hit their limit. Motts had gotten serious in his final year, and his reputation was soaring.


In the medal predictions, he was ranked first. Me, second.

A king in second place—unthinkable humiliation.


“I’ll take the lead!”


The march began, and I proudly stepped to the front.


But the White Mountains were hell.

Beneath the gray sky, endless forests of dark green swallowed us whole.


An hour later, I was in the rear.


“Too heavy! Too painful! A king shouldn’t carry this crap!”


Tent, sleeping bag, clothes, food and water for a week— over sixty pounds digging into my shoulders. On top of that, the useless rifle clanked against my legs. My Fake It Art-trained body wasn’t built for this.


“Pickles, this is a servant’s job.”


I dumped my pack on top of Pickles’s pack. He gave me that timid smile of his.


“If the instructor finds out, you’ll lose the King’s Medal.”


“I don’t need it. A toy medal doesn’t make a king. I was born one.”


“Right… yeah, that’s true,” he said, smiling like an idiot.


“I just wanna get this dumb drill over with and leave this muscle-brain school behind.”


Feeling lighter, I poked Pickles’s butt with my rifle and kept trudging along the muddy trail.


$ $ $


Six days later came the morning of disaster.


“Enemy at eleven o’clock! Spread out!”


The officer wannabes were running wild, pretending to fight invisible foes.


What a stupid play.


I’d ditched the medal race and sat in the grass, unfolding a newspaper I’d smuggled in — the real estate section my father used to read. Ever since I came to the military school, I’d been reading it every morning.


The others’ voices faded away.

Rain began to spot the paper.

Black clouds swirled overhead.

Still, I kept reading.




By nightfall, the drizzle had turned into a waterfall. Yet tents were forbidden on the final night. Rain poured through the trees and into our sleeping bags. For a clean-freak like me, this was torture. But exhaustion won. One by one, the guys started snoring.


“Wake up! Enemy attack!”


Just as I’d drifted off, someone shook me awake.


“There’s no enemy,”


I grumbled, my head foggy from cold and lack of sleep.

Didn’t matter—my squad dragged me up anyway.


“Move it, Donut!”

“We’re not taking the blame for you!”


So I got up and marched again, caked in mud.

Cold. Tired. Soaked. This sucks.

Staring at Dorian’s back up front, I thought:


These guys are idiots.


Crawling in the mud like worms—what’s so fun about that?

What’s the point of suffering this much?

War’s the game of fools.

The world isn’t moved by strength—it’s moved by money. By business.


The pack bit into my shoulders again. I looked around for Pickles to dump it on him, but he was nowhere to be found. I shook my head.


That’s when I saw it—up on the ridge, a red flash tearing through the dark.


Fire?

Out here, in this storm?


Impossible.

Must’ve been my imagination—

I’d stopped at the rear when Motts barked,


“Move it, Donut!”


“Don’t you dare give orders to a king!”


I put him in his place—and that’s when it happened.


The ground shuddered.

A monstrous roar filled the forest.


“The cliff’s coming down!”

“Run!”


But there was no time to move.


A roaring wave of mud swallowed us whole.

A violent shock.

Darkness.


And then—


Only rain, whispering through the silent forest.