Stellerium

Lardes Fossilis has no dream.
Not a lost one. Not a broken one. Just an empty space where a dream should be — and neither he nor anyone else knows why.
The military is all he has ever known. Now he's one cadet among thousands at Camp Varian, ground through brutal simulations meant to forge the galaxy's next generation of soldiers. Everyone around him is reaching for something — a rank, a home, a legend to become. Lardes reaches for nothing at all. And the people who notice that emptiness can't look away from it.
But the deeper he's pulled into the machine — its warlords, its factions, the rotting foundations of the Tang Empire itself — the closer he drifts to the one thing he was never allowed to have. A reason. A want. A dream worth fighting for.
Stellerium is military sci-fi told cinematically — episode-based, built in hard cuts and cold silences, paced for people who think in scenes rather than chapters. A cast you'll love, a cast you'll hate, and a boy at the center who doesn't yet know he's the most important person in the room.