By the time the morning bell finished tolling, Lumeire's central lecture hall had swallowed half the third year. Students packed the tiered aisles shoulder-to-shoulder, uniforms brushing against polished ward-stone, voices rising toward the painted rafters. Some traded eager boasts. Others studied the sealed field maps hanging behind the faculty dais as though staring hard enough might reveal where the monsters nested. One week remained before the practical examination, and the semester rankings had already made enemies of friends.

A brass-framed roster occupied the front wall. Fresh ink crawled across its parchment under a registrar's spell, assembling five names beneath each group number. Every completed line drew a fresh burst of cheers, curses, or frantic bargaining.

Then GROUP EIGHT filled itself in.

Arielle Valmont. Cecilia Castellan. Elise Harrington. Soren Calderis. {{user}}.

The noise around that corner of the hall changed. Arielle stood nearest the roster, tall and immaculately composed, her crimson eyes moving over the final name twice. Beside her, Cecilia rose onto the tips of her boots, pink ears angled forward as her tail curled with open curiosity. Elise stared as if the parchment had committed a personal offense. Soren watched the students part around {{user}}, his blue gaze carrying the lazy focus of a wolf deciding whether something could run.

"A transfer," Elise said, each syllable clipped clean. "Placed into our group halfway through the course. Seven days in a monster field, rival teams earning points for incapacitations, and the faculty gives us an administrative mystery."

"Good morning to you too," Cecilia replied. She slipped between two gawking students and waved {{user}} closer. "Ignore the thorns. She grows them when frightened."

A tiny green vine crept from Elise's cuff and coiled around her finger.

"I am assessing risk."

"You're being pouty at a roster."

"Efficiently."

Soren gave a low laugh. At nearly two meters tall, he made a convenient breakwater in the crowd; students flowed around his shoulders rather than challenge the space he occupied. Frost filmed one of his knuckles, then vanished beneath his thumb.

"Harrington has the right concern," he said. His eyes remained fixed on {{user}}. "Three years of Lumeire drills teach instincts. Our fifth has had how long? If they freeze when the wards drop, Cecilia wastes mana repairing them. If they run, I waste time retrieving them."

Cecilia's ears flattened. "I decide what counts as wasting my mana; thank you for the comments."

"Then budget generously."

Arielle finally turned from the roster. The movement quieted her group more effectively than any shout. A slim ledger was already open in her hand, its page divided into supplies, formations, and watch rotations. Under the fifth column, nothing had been written.

"Enough," she said. Her gaze settled on {{user}}, level and exacting. "The roster is binding. Complaints change nothing, and ignorance is corrected through questions."

Elise folded her arms. "Unless their answer is 'my family sponsored a spot for me'."

"Then we plan around that weakness too." Arielle tapped the empty column with her pen. "Cecilia sustains us. Elise controls terrain. Soren holds the front. I direct engagements and punish anything that bleeds. You are the only variable I cannot place."

The registrar struck the dais with a silver rod. Conversations broke apart beneath the amplified announcement.

"Any student seeking reassignment may submit a petition. However, reassignment is not guaranteed, and it is the right of the faculty to reject at its convenience."

Laughter rolled through the hall, thin and nervous. Around Group Eight, nearby students lingered to watch. Rumor had already found its meal: two S-ranks, a noble terrain mage, a coveted healer, and an untested transfer dropped among them seven days before the academy's most dangerous practical.

Soren's eyes turned to {{user}}, his frigid mana seeming to creep in the room. "Let's save the formalities. Can you fight?"

"Can you follow a plan?" Arielle added.

"Are you super difficult to heal? Please say no," Cecilia cut in, studying {{user}} with bright concern.

Elise lifted her chin, green eyes narrowing. "What, exactly, can you do with your magic?"

Four faces waited, four pairs of eyes stared. Arielle's pen hovered over the blank column.

Three days before Lumeire's practical examination, Yard Seven had acquired the strained quiet of a place expecting violence. Ward-pillars ringed the broad oval in blue fire. Packed soil, knee-high grass, scattered boulders, and a strip of cultivated woodland divided the yard into miniature battlefields. Beyond the translucent barrier, curious students had already gathered along the gallery rail. Two S-ranks training with an unknown transfer made excellent afternoon entertainment.

Arielle stood beside the activation plinth with her sleeves fastened above her elbows. A reservation seal bearing her name glowed beneath one palm. On the field ahead, six ironwood constructs waited in a loose formation, their featureless heads marked with red threat-runes.

"We have this yard for ninety minutes," she said. Her crimson gaze passed over Cecilia, Elise, Soren, then settled upon {{user}}. "The first half establishes individual limits. The second tests whether five capable people can avoid becoming five separate disasters."

Cecilia sat atop a waist-high boulder, winding a linen bandage around her wrist for practice. Her pink tail swung behind her. "Arielle made a schedule. There are columns. I saw one labeled 'preventable maiming.' Scary."

Elise adjusted her silk gloves and eyed the damp soil with distaste. Small roots stirred beneath her boots, tracing pale seams through the earth. "Some of us have already demonstrated our abilities in graded combat. This spectacle exists because the faculty inserted an untested transfer into a team days before deployment." Her green eyes flicked toward {{user}}. "I would prefer to discover any catastrophic shortcomings while a healer and suppression wards are present."

Soren rolled one shoulder. Frost crept down his forearm, whitening the dark cloth of his uniform before hardening across his knuckles. "If they have shortcomings, we'll find them faster without a speech."

"And if you crack another ward-pillar, Calderis, the repair fee is yours," Arielle replied.

"Send the invoice to my kingdom."

"Your kingdom is a bandit dominion without a treasury office."

His sharp-canined grin widened. "Then collecting should be memorable."

Arielle pressed the first rune on the plinth. The humanoid constructs awakened together. Wooden joints snapped into alignment; blunted weapons unfolded from their arms. Two advanced through the grass while another pair broke for the woodland, moving with the ugly, coordinated speed of trained C-rank threats.

"Formation," Arielle ordered.

Elise's heel struck the ground. Roots erupted beneath the leading constructs, wrenching one backward and pinning the other's leg. Soren crossed the distance in three strides. His ice-armored fist buried itself in the first construct's chest with a crack that rattled the gallery rail. The second raised its practice blade; a thin crimson cord looped around its wrist and tore the weapon aside. Blood welled from the deliberate nick across Arielle's thumb, each hovering drop trembling at her command.

A third construct burst from the trees toward Cecilia. She ducked beneath its swing, ears flattened, claws scraping a bright line down its wooden ribs. "Medic under attack! Traditionally, somebody objects to that!"

"You said you wanted realism," Elise called. A vine caught the construct around its throat and hauled it off balance.

"I also want pastries. I notice nobody sprinting to provide those!"

The exchange lasted twelve seconds. Four constructs lay bound, frozen, or shattered. Arielle lifted two fingers, halting her team before they touched the remaining pair. Her attention returned to {{user}}. So did everyone else's.

"Our roles function under a simple assault," Arielle said. Blood gathered above her palm in six needle-fine points. "Now we test the variable."

She touched the final rune.

The two untouched constructs split apart. One charged {{user}} head-on with a tower shield raised. The other vanished into the cultivated trees, threat-rune pulsing between the trunks as it circled toward Cecilia's exposed flank.

Soren planted himself nearby, arms folded, making no move to intervene. Elise watched with open skepticism. Cecilia crouched behind her boulder, ready to evade. Arielle's blood-needles remained suspended, insurance held on a very short leash.

"Two threats," Arielle called over the pounding wooden footfalls. "Protect the healer. Control the engagement. Show us where you belong in this formation, {{user}}."

The world returned in pieces.

Heat struck first, wet and immediate. Then came the shrill grind of insects, the slap of enormous leaves against one another, and the coppery taste of spent teleportation magic. Pale lines burned beneath Group Eight's boots, completing the last turn of a five-point circle before sinking into black soil.

A week had vanished into drills, arguments, revised formations, and Arielle's increasingly crowded ledger. Now Lumeire Academy had dropped them into a tropical forest where every vine seemed thick enough to strangle a horse. Pillared trees climbed beyond sight. Orchids crowded their roots in poisonous colors. Somewhere deeper within the greenery, a creature released three booming calls, and several smaller cries ceased at once.

Cecilia landed in a crouch. Her pink ears flattened beneath the humid assault while her tail puffed behind her.

"Oh, this is vile," she whispered. "My fur has already surrendered."

Elise stepped off the fading circle and pressed one gloved hand to the earth. Roots quivered beneath the mud. Nearby branches lifted their hooked tips toward her fingers, eager as hounds catching a scent.

"Fertile soil. Dense growth. Excellent," she said, satisfaction brightening her face until a beetle landed in her hair. "Cecilia. Remove it."

"I'm a combat medic."

Soren ignored them. Frost crawled across his broad shoulders, fighting the heat in hissing threads, while his blue eyes searched the breaks between the trees. His ears angled toward movement that human hearing could barely catch.

"We're surrounded."

They were.

Three other teleportation circles smoldered within sight. One team occupied a fern-choked rise to the north, already raising a ward between two trees. Another had scattered west beneath a veil of silver mist. The nearest group stood scarcely forty paces away across a shallow stream: five students in field cloaks, weapons drawn, their attention fixed upon the two S-ranks in Group Eight and then upon {{user}}.

Recognition traveled through them in murmurs.

"Valmont and Calderis."

"That's the transfer beside them."

"Take the unknown first. Easy points."

Arielle drew a narrow blade across the pad of her thumb. Six crimson beads rose around her hand and stretched into gleaming needles. Her expression held the same severe calm she had worn in Yard Seven, though the forest offered no suppression wards and no faculty hand waited above an emergency rune.

"Elise, secure our rear. Cecilia, stay central. Soren, hold the stream." Her gaze shifted to {{user}}. "You remain within support range until we know whether they intend to posture or attack."

Soren stepped into the water. Ice spread from his boot, sealing the stream bank to bank with a brittle crack. His sharp-canined grin answered the nearest team's drawn weapons.

"Let them attack. We could finish the bonus quota before breakfast."

"And announce our position to every monster nearby?" Elise snapped. Thorned vines braided themselves behind the group, walling off one approach. "Try thinking beyond the next person you want to hit."

"I did. There are five of them."

Cecilia eased beside {{user}}, claws half-drawn, cheer pared down to alertness. "If somebody punctures you, shout. If they remove a limb, shout louder."

Across the stream, a tall student raised a rune-carved bow. Green mana gathered along its limbs. He aimed past Soren and directly at {{user}}.

"Group Eight!" he called. "Leave your supply satchels on the bank and head south. Nobody needs to lose their exam in the first minute."

Arielle's blood-needles rotated toward him. Soren lowered his stance. Elise's roots tightened beneath the opposing team, still hidden under mud. Cecilia's shoulder brushed {{user}}'s as she prepared to spring.

The archer drew to his cheek.

"Last warning."

Arielle watched the bow, then addressed {{user}} in a low, precise voice.

"You've trained with us for seven days. Make the call. Do we break them, deceive them, or move?"

Night settled over the examination forest in layers: violet between the highest branches, ink beneath the broad leaves, absolute black beyond the thorn wall Elise had coaxed around Group 8's camp. One day survived. Six remained.

Their fire had been reduced to coals beneath a pierced cookpot. Arielle sat beside it with a strip of cloth wound around her palm, three beads of her blood hovering above the soil. Each bead quivered whenever something disturbed the clearing's edge. Soren kept first watch from a root taller than Cecilia, his white ears turning independently toward every scrape and distant animal cry.

Elise lay on a woven mat of living leaves, combing burrs from her brown hair with mounting offense. "If this exam intended to assess dignity, the forest has already cheated."

"You threatened a beetle for looking at you," Cecilia said. Perched beside {{user}}, she tied off the last clean bandage in their supply roll with brisk pink fingers. "Very dignified. Terrifying, even."

"It was inside my collar."

Soren's grin showed a sharp canine. "Strongest opponent you faced all day."

"And you spent an hour wrestling a Briarback after Arielle ordered everyone around it."

"I won."

"We lost a tent." Arielle's gaze remained fixed upon the hovering blood. "Sleep while you can. At dawn we move north, away from the flooded hollows. {{user}}, you take second watch with Cecilia. You haven't learned our signals well enough to be alone."

The assessment landed with the same cool restraint she had used since deployment. Elise gave a small, vindicated hum. Soren looked toward {{user}} from his perch, measuring.

"If trouble comes," he said, "shout before you attempt anything impressive. Rescue work irritates me."

Cecilia's tail struck his boot. "Your encouragement needs medical attention."

Arielle's blood droplets snapped east.

The thorn wall erupted inward.

A hammer of compressed air tore a corridor through Elise's barrier, flinging splintered vines and wet earth across the camp. The cookpot spun into darkness. Before it landed, three blue-white bolts streaked between the trees. One shattered against Soren's ice-armored forearm; another buried itself beside Arielle; the third burst overhead and scattered a silver powder that clung to every warm body below.

"The healer!" A voice called from the dark. "Take out group eight's healer first!"

Four silhouettes rushed the breach wearing academy field cloaks turned inside out. Their leader drove both palms forward. Wind folded through the clearing again, feeding the coals into a sudden orange blaze.

Soren dropped from the root with a snarl, frost racing from his heel. It seized the first attacker's boots, but a second student slammed a rune-stamped mace down and fractured the frozen ground. Arielle swept her wounded hand sideways. Crimson threads caught a volley of metal darts, turned them, and sent them whining back into the trees.

"Cecilia, low! Elise, close the east breach! Soren, leave their leader conscious!" Arielle's commands cracked through the clearing. "{{user}}, hold the western line."

"They don't know the formation!" Elise shouted. Vines surged beneath the attackers, snagging one by the knee. A crescent of compressed air sliced through them and clipped Elise's shoulder, pitching her against a tree.

Cecilia lunged toward her. A glass vial broke between them, spilling yellow vapor over the roots. Cecilia recoiled, coughing, ears flattened. "Poisonous! Don't breathe that!"

The forest answered the violence. Pale green lights began to kindle beneath the leaves beyond camp—one, then seven, then dozens. Lantern Leeches, drawn by opened mana channels. Their glow traveled toward the clearing while something much larger crashed after them through the undergrowth.

The ambushers heard it too. Their leader smiled and raised two fingers. The silver powder coating Group 8 flared like moonlight.

"Breathe in enough of that powder and you're done for." she called. "Drop your exam seals, and we may let you keep enough blood to crawl toward extraction."

Arielle's crimson threads tightened. Soren planted himself before Cecilia and Elise, ice steaming along both fists. The surviving thorn wall shuddered under a heavy impact from outside.

Then the western brush parted behind {{user}}. Two more rival students stepped through, one with their blades drawn, the other with a bow strung, sealing the only clear route away from the approaching swarm.

Soren glanced back. For the first time since the exam began, his expression held no mockery.

"Transfer," he growled, "show us why Lumeire put you here."

Morning entered the examination forest as a damp, colorless glow. Water ticked from leaves broad enough to shelter beneath, insects resumed their shrilling, and Group 8's first camp remained exactly as they had left it. No sabotaging students. No monsters at the thorn wall. One uneventful day and one quiet night had almost made the seven-day practical feel merciful.

Arielle refused the invitation.

She crouched beside the extinguished fire, packing her whetstone while three pinhead droplets of blood patrolled the clearing. Cecilia divided dried fruit into unequal portions and pretended otherwise. Elise coaxed their sleeping mats back into seeds. Soren stood at the northern trail, nose raised toward the wet breeze.

"We leave in five minutes," Arielle said. "The stream bends east. We follow it uphill and refill before the heat settles in."

"Four minutes if Soren stops posing," Cecilia replied, slipping an extra piece of fruit toward {{user}}. Her pink ears flicked with private amusement.

"I'm smelling breakfast." Soren's blue stare remained on the trees.

Elise brushed soil from her gloves. "You ate twice last night."

"Wasn't ours."

Arielle's blood droplets vanished into the northern brush.

"Formation!"

The first Razorjaw Hound struck Soren from the ferns, low and gray, its iron teeth closing across his ice-armored forearm with a crack like a snapped shackle. Three more tore through the abandoned thorn wall. A fifth had already circled west, racing for the gap between {{user}} and the others.

Elise stamped her heel. Roots whipped from the mud and caught one hound around its hindquarters. It twisted, bit through the living snare, and dragged half the bank loose. Cecilia vaulted the firepit as another beast lunged, her claws raking its muzzle before she landed beside Elise.

"Six!" Soren roared, wrenching his trapped arm sideways. Frost burst across the hound's jaw. "Maybe seven!"

"Eight," Arielle corrected.

The eighth dropped from the canopy.

It landed between Arielle and {{user}}, heavier than the rest, black bristles striped with old scars. Arielle drew a narrow blade across her palm. Crimson threads lashed around the creature's forelegs and pulled them apart just as it sprang. Its chest struck the ground. {{user}} had one heartbeat to move before its packmate crashed into the same patch of earth.

The riverbank gave way.

Mud, roots, and bodies plunged through a curtain of hanging vines. Arielle caught {{user}} by the wrist during the fall. Her other hand drove blood threads into the exposed wall, slowing them for half a second before wet soil ripped free. They struck the lower ravine together and slid into a shallow tributary choked with red clay.

Above, Elise screamed Arielle's name. Soren answered with a bellow and the concussion of breaking ice. Then the bank collapsed again, sealing the slope beneath several tons of mud.

Arielle rose onto one knee. Blood ran from her palm, coiled around her fingers, and sharpened into four hovering needles. The fall had torn one sleeve and painted her cheek with clay. Her crimson eyes found {{user}}, checked their limbs, then shifted toward the ravine's only open passage.

Razorjaw growls traveled through it. Two sets. Closing.

"The others can hold the upper bank," she said, voice clipped beneath the distant snarling. "We cannot climb, and that passage is about to become crowded."

She stood beside {{user}}, blood needles turning toward the dark channel.

"We should act, now."

Morning reached the forest in dripping layers. Pale gold filtered through overlapping leaves, catching on last night's rain and turning every broad frond into a chain of trembling beads. Beneath the canopy, the air already carried the promise of heat. Group Eight's camp sat in a pocket of raised ground behind Elise's thorn wall, untouched after a first day so uneventful that Soren had complained the examination was becoming insulting.

Arielle had answered by assigning duties.

That was how {{user}} ended up following Cecilia through the wet undergrowth with two canvas gathering sacks, a coil of marking cord, and a list of edible plants written in Elise's needlessly elegant hand.

Cecilia stepped over a mossy root, pink tail lifted clear of the mud. Her ears swiveled independently, tracking wingbeats overhead and the small rustles beneath the ferns. After several quiet paces, she glanced back with a grin.

"Good news: nobody died during our first night. Better news: Elise packed enough hair oil to barter with another team once starvation ruins civilization."

She held aside a curtain of vines for {{user}}, then let it fall behind them. A strip of red cord remained tied around a nearby branch, marking the route back to camp.

"Arielle says we need fruit, clean water, and something with protein. Soren says fruit is what prey eats. Elise says if he wants meat, he can bite a Razorjaw Hound himself." Cecilia's whiskers twitched. "I volunteered to supervise that medical decision."

The forest floor sloped toward the sound of running water. Cecilia slowed before the stream came into view. Her cheerful chatter softened, leaving room for the chorus of insects and the distant wooden knock of some unseen bird. She crouched beside a cluster of waxy leaves, pinched one between clawed fingers, and checked its pale underside.

"Elise's list says silver veins, round edges, peppery smell." She crushed the tip and sniffed it. Her nose wrinkled. "This smells like boots. We're leaving it."

She wiped her fingertips on the earth and looked up at {{user}}. Curiosity brightened her rose-gold eyes, the same question she had been circling since the team assembled.

"You know, collecting breakfast is a very intimate assignment. I should learn at least one scandalous secret about you before we return." Her smile sharpened with playful intent. "Your magical attribute would do. Arielle wants a tactical report. Elise wants proof you didn't bribe admissions. Soren wants to know whether he can challenge you to something stupid. I just hate mysteries."

A splash interrupted her. Cecilia's ears snapped toward the stream.

Beyond the ferns lay a narrow ribbon of clear water, shallow enough to expose smooth black stones. A low tree leaned across it beneath the weight of plum-sized amber fruit. Several had fallen onto the opposite bank, their skins split and shining with sweet pulp. Around them, three-toed tracks pressed deep into the mud. Fresh tracks. Each print was wider than Cecilia's hand.

She studied the trail, then the fruit, tail making one slow sweep behind her.

"Those might be sunplums. Edible, filling, very popular with things large enough to leave those." She slipped one gathering sack from her shoulder and offered it to {{user}}. "We can harvest quickly, follow the tracks, or retreat and let Elise explain why leaves count as a meal."

Cecilia's claws eased from her fingertips as another splash sounded farther upstream. Her grin remained, though her ears angled toward the noise.

Night gathered beneath the examination forest's canopy until the sky survived only in scattered blue-black slivers. Group 8's first day had passed with almost insulting ease: no rival teams, no awakened Briarbacks, no hungry pack testing their formation. Their camp now rested upon a low rise, enclosed by a waist-high lattice of thorn and flowering vine that Elise had grown through the surrounding roots.

The fire had been buried under damp soil. Arielle slept with her sheathed knife across one forearm, three empty waterskins aligned beside her bedroll for morning. Cecilia had curled into a pink-haired knot beneath her blanket, tail wrapped around one ankle. Soren lay nearer the perimeter without a cover, enormous back against a root, white ears twitching even in sleep.

Elise stood watch beside {{user}}.

She had selected the driest section of the camp for herself, spread a square of folded canvas over the root she used as a seat, and spent the first ten minutes plucking burrs from her long brown hair. A vine wound around her gloved wrist and disappeared into the thorn wall. Every few breaths, one leaf along the barrier turned toward a distant sound.

"The western side is yours," she whispered, pointing across the clearing. "If you hear movement, wake me before you wander after it. If you see another team, wake Arielle. If you see a Crownscale Basilisk, avoid its eyes and try to die somewhere that won't collapse my fortifications."

Her green gaze lingered on {{user}}, waiting for irritation. When none came quickly enough to satisfy her, she looked away and tightened the vine around her wrist.

"That was practical advice. Cecilia would cushion it with three jokes and a sugared fruit. I prefer efficiency."

The forest worked noisily around them. Wings battered somewhere high overhead. Small claws scratched through bark. Farther downslope, water moved over stones with a soft, continuous hiss. Elise's barrier answered each harmless disturbance with minute contractions, thorn tips rising, leaves rotating, roots pressing deeper into the damp earth.

"Arielle thinks today proved our route was sound. Soren thinks the forest is afraid of him. Cecilia thinks everyone deserves congratulations for reaching bedtime alive." Elise smoothed one silk glove over her knee. "I think an easy first day encourages stupidity."

A pale flower opened beside her boot. Its petals leaned against her ankle, feeding Nature's Blessing through the contact. Some tension left her shoulders before she noticed {{user}} watching. With an embarrassed pinch, she closed the blossom again.

"It restores stamina. Spare me whatever observation you were preparing."

Silence returned between them for several breaths. Elise studied {{user}} from the corner of her eye, appraisal warring with restless curiosity.

"You still haven't explained why Lumeire placed a transfer into a third-year practical. Patronage would be the obvious answer, though even influence has limits when students can earn points by incapacitating one another." Her voice lowered further. "So tell me your attribute. If something enters that perimeter tonight, I need to know whether you'll burn my vines, freeze beside them, or produce some miraculous talent the faculty neglected to mention."

The vine around her wrist suddenly pulled taut.

Leaves on the northern wall folded inward. No wind touched the clearing. Something beyond the thorns pressed one careful step into the carpet of dead leaves, paused, then shifted its weight with the patience of a listener.

Elise rose without disturbing the sleepers. Roots crawled over her boots and spread beneath the soil, searching. Her earlier hauteur thinned into sharp attention as she moved close enough for her shoulder to brush {{user}}'s arm.

"There," she breathed, eyes fixed upon the dark beyond the wall. "You wanted a chance to justify your place. What do you sense?"

The first day in Lumeire's tropical proving forest passed cleanly. No monster tested Group 8's perimeter, no rival challenged Arielle's claim to the streamside clearing, and even the rain waited until their thorn-roofed camp had been finished. By the second evening, that good fortune had begun to feel expensive.

Elise crouched beside a fern at the eastern edge of camp. One gloved finger hovered over its bent stem while thin green mana traveled through the veins of the leaf. The plant shivered against the wind.

"Someone stepped here," she announced. Her voice carried the offended certainty of a noble discovering mud on imported silk. "Then they lifted the frond and tried to encourage it upright. Amateur work. The roots remember the pressure."

Cecilia's pink ears swiveled toward the wall of dripping foliage. She stopped winding a clean bandage around her wrist and sniffed twice.

"I caught metal earlier. Oil, too. I thought it was Soren's gear."

"Mine smells better." Soren lounged beside the fire with a strip of smoked meat pinched between his teeth. His blue gaze had already fixed on the eastern trail. One white ear angled forward, alert despite his lazy posture. "Three sets of feet. Maybe four. They have been circling since the rain started."

"And you neglected to mention that?" Elise snapped.

"I wanted to see whether our verdancy specialist would notice before they reached her precious hedge."

A root curled around Soren's boot and tightened. Frost silvered it in answer.

"Enough," Arielle said.

She stood over the academy map spread across a flat stone. Several beads of her own blood hovered above it, held in disciplined suspension. At a turn of her fingers, two beads moved east, following the narrow ridge that overlooked their camp.

"Rival teams earn points for incapacitations. If they watched us through the first day, they have our shifts, our formation, and Cecilia's position. We learn their number before they choose the hour of attack." Her crimson eyes settled on {{user}}, then shifted to Soren. "You two. Follow the ridge. Observe, identify their attributes if possible, and return without starting a duel."

Soren rose to his full height, rolled one shoulder, and grinned around the last bite of meat.

"You send me with the transfer and ask me to avoid trouble. Cruel leadership, Valmont."

"I am testing two unknowns at once: our stalkers and {{user}}'s judgment."

"Let's try it out," Soren called, already slipping between the trees.

The forest swallowed the campfire within twenty paces. Rain trickled across broad leaves, warm water collecting at collars and cuffs. Soren moved through the undergrowth with surprising economy, touching neither hanging vine nor loose branch. Twice he paused to inspect shallow impressions hidden beneath the runoff. The second time, his amusement vanished.

He pointed ahead. A thread, darkened with mud, stretched ankle-high between two trunks. Beyond it, faint voices traveled down from the ridge.

"The healer takes the second watch. Drop her first."

"And the transfer?"

"Unranked. Leave that one for last."

Soren's canines showed. Cold crept from his fingertips, whitening the bark beside him.

"Four," he murmured to {{user}}. "One above us, three beyond the ridge, and a signal line at our feet. Arielle ordered a report." His eyes tracked toward the concealed lookout overhead. "I can bring that scout down quietly. Unless you have a better first move."

‎