They made it to the top together — stumbling, burning, whole bodies humming with a heat that was no longer only from the sun. Lucas pushed himself up, legs trembling, and planted his feet on the flat stone of the plateau. Drew dropped into a fighting stance beside him, eyes locked on the masked figure and Shawn who stood like a statue at the summit's edge.
Shawn turned. The movement was lazy, almost bored, and when his gaze landed on Drew and then Lucas a coldness slid into his expression. He smirked once, brief and unreadable, as if he had been waiting for the moment to pass. Drew hit the line and ran, all blind forward momentum and heat.
"We are not supposed to fight here," Shawn said, quiet as a single blade, and then reached out. His fingers tapped Drew on the shoulder with the lightest of touches.
Drew folded as if an unseen weight had dropped over him. The world tilted. Lucas tried to steady himself, a shout caught in his throat, and then his vision tunneled into black. The plateau dissolved into a scatter of indistinct sounds — a shout, the rustle of canvas, the rush of feet — and the next thing he knew he was being carried.
He remembered only flashes: hands on his arms, the sting of wind, the long dark taste of unconsciousness. Medics moved with tight efficiency and voices that fused into one single current of command. Pain lit along the paths of his limbs where steel had found him, and beneath that pain something cold and hungry had been pulled from his blood. There was a sliding sense of being alive and not being able to hold the shape of life.
When he opened his eyes it was to a small, steady pool of light. A lantern burned on a low wooden table, its flame protected by glass and casting the tent in soft amber. The canvas above his head creaked with the wind. He lay still, every movement drawing a tight, white flare from his chest and legs. Bandages wrapped him in snug swathes; beneath them his skin was hot where the knives had struck, but the dull venom that had once fogged his thoughts was gone. He could think. He could breathe without the world tilting.
On the table, the paper lay folded once. Ink had been pressed into it in a careful hand. Lucas leaned on an elbow despite the burn and took it.
Trials : Act I
Lucas's Scores :
Combat : 1 star(s)
Endurance : 3 star(s)
Tactical IQ : 2 star(s)
Adaptibility : 4 star(s)
Overall : pass, eligible for next act
He read the words twice, then a roaring, small life rose inside him. He sat up so fast the tent tilted and the healer's voice barked for him to lie back, but Lucas was already off the pallet, feet heavy and alive. Bandages hugged his limbs like second skin; he could feel the ache but not the numbness anymore. The thought of failure evaporated from him like dust. He had passed. He had made it.
Outside the flap he could hear the low murmur of the camp — candidates, medics, the tired clink of mess bowls. He stepped out and the night air hit his lungs cool and fierce. A fire burned low in the center of camp, the embers painting faces with orange. Drew sat on a straw pallet by the flames, a blanket over his shoulders, laughing with a few others. When he turned and saw Lucas he smiled wide and waved him over.
"You read it?" Drew asked before Lucas could ask anything. His voice was raspy but grinning. "They put you as a pass. Combat's low, but look at Adaptability — four stars, man. You kept getting up."
Lucas sank down beside him, the wood bench hard under his thighs. The bandage on his chest pulled as he breathed. "I remember knives." The memory came like a cold rain, the flash of metal, the feel of impact. "I remember Drew getting hit. I… I blacked out."
Drew's expression sobered, then softened. "You did good. We all did something," he said. "I couldn't go to the meeting at the center. You must've slept through it."
"What happens next?" Lucas asked. The hunger for what came after the pass gnawed at him more than the pain.
Drew leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Team battle. You, me, and Legge. Heard? They mixed us this morning." He rubbed his jaw, thinking. "Should be interesting. Legge's solid. He keeps to himself."
A rustle of cloak announced the arrival before the man stepped fully into the lanternlight. Legge moved with the kind of restraint that made Lucas study him without realizing it — the silent measuring of someone not given to easy motion.
He wore a long, dark-blue tunic that fell in clean, practical lines to meet boots that had seen real miles. The fabric was tailored but unshowy; nothing about him shouted for attention, and yet his outline cut through the glow as if he belonged to a different, quieter sort of watch. A grey-silver cloak hung from his shoulders, catching the firelight and adding a slow, deliberate movement to his silhouette as if he carried wind with him. His trousers were darker, boots scuffed but purposeful.
Legge's hair was medium length and dark, pushed back in a way that was messy but deliberate, framing a face that had already been set with the kind of resolve people notice and then forget to name. There was a look in his eyes that weighed things twice before they had a chance to fall; Lucas felt, oddly, that Legge calculated the air in the camp as much as the ground.
"Legge," Drew said simply, as if to fill the space.
Legge inclined his head once, minimal and curt. He sat a respectful distance away, cloak pooling at his shoulders. He said nothing more than was needed: his presence itself was statement enough.
Lucas watched him for a long heartbeat. The night pressed in with the smell of smoke and the metallic tang of bandage salve. Tomorrow would bring whatever the judges wanted to throw at them — traps, strategy, mesh-routes of combat — but for this moment, with the scores folded in his pocket and the fire warming his skin, Lucas felt something new and stubborn: a readiness that no knife, no blackout, could take from him.
They reached the trial grounds at first light. The air tasted of dust and opportunity; sun cut across the flat arena and lit the faces of the candidates waiting there—some nervous, some bored, most already sizing one another up. The twelve teams fanned out in a loose ring, boots shifting on packed earth. Tents and temporary benches clustered beyond them, the muted hubbub of a thousand small conversations rising and falling like a tide.
Legge stood a little apart, a rope coiled over one shoulder, running through a practiced knot with calm fingers. He swung the rope once, twice, watching the curve, the rhythm like a heartbeat. Lucas nudged Drew, nodding toward him.
"Think he forgot this one's about teamwork, not acrobatics?" Lucas murmured, unable to resist the tease.
Drew snorted a laugh. "If that rope can bind us a win, I'll let him show off all day."
Legge glanced up at their voices, a faint lift at the corner of his mouth that didn't quite qualify as amusement. He set the rope across his back and edged toward the center where the other team members had gathered.
Their quiet banter died as an examiner stepped into the ring of teams—one of those figures with a cloak cut like authority and an expression carved from finality. He moved with intent, and when he raised a hand, silence fell as if someone had drawn a curtain over the noisy world.
With a single snap—small and precise—the air folded.
The ground pitched and reality slid like a film being wound: a soft pop. The candidates found themselves standing inside a long chamber of stone. The room was so empty that their breaths seemed loud, and every footstep echoed like a hammer. Pillars rose in regimented lines, their capitals lost in shadow; between each pillar hung red fabric banners that fluttered faintly though no wind stirred. At the center lay a vast circular carpet, purple as bruised twilight, its pattern almost hypnotic beneath the lamplight.
The echo of the examiner's snap lingered as he walked forward. He turned, and the gathered dozen teams—faces pale and expectant—felt his gaze pass over each of them.
"This trial," he said, voice hollow enough to bounce from wall to wall, "requires escape. There are twelve teams. Each team must find a way out of this chamber."
He paused, letting the words thrum in the air. Someone in the back breathed too loud; it sounded like a shout.
"Rules," the examiner continued. "No teaming with an enemy. No alliances outside your team. If a team escapes, the path they used becomes open for others to use. If you attempt to break those rules—if collusion is found—you will be disqualified."
Around the room, candidates exchanged looks: some tight with calculation, some bright with sudden opportunity, others dark with suspicion. The banners overhead seemed to watch them, crimson folds waiting like eyes. Lucas felt the old thrum of excitement—adrenaline, yes, but tempered this time by a new edge: strategy.
Drew leaned close. "Twelve teams, one chamber. This won't be about brute strength."
"No," Lucas whispered. "It'll be about who can think while everyone else's heart races."
They stepped off the carpet like soldiers called to the first line. The game had begun.
The masked candidate was the first to move.
They rose without a sound, the cloak around them folding like a shadow as they leapt and hovered above the carpet. From that height they scanned the room with the practiced stillness of someone who'd learned to read a battlefield from the air. Their hand pointed, quick and sure — and everyone's gaze followed to the same place: a vast trapdoor set into the stone floor, its seam dark as a line of ink. It was closing, slowly, impossible to stop.
Lucas felt the surprise prick at his skin, then the small smirk of a person who'd been waiting for the obvious. Shawn's face tightened into bored amusement so plain it looked almost rude. "Typical," he muttered, as if doors and hidden seams were a nuisance rather than a challenge.
The examiner's voice cut the moment in half. "I will not be held responsible if this trial grows… hostile." He turned and left as calmly as he had come, leaving the echo of his warning to scatter across the chamber.
Then the room stuttered into motion.
Hands struck stone. Hammers fell. Teams threw their weight against walls, picked at mortar, searched for seams, pressed fingers into cracks. Noise bloomed — the heavy thud of desperation, the sharp spit of pebbles, the low, barking arguments of men and women who'd been given a moment and refused to waste it.
Shawn's team did not move. He sat on the purple carpet with an arm flung over his knee, watching the chaos swell like tide against a cliff. His expression was a study in unruffled leisure; the urgency of others fed his amusement.
Lucas did not sit. He watched. That was the difference. While the room exploded into action, his eyes scanned the banners, the pillars, the seams at floor and ceiling. Something had to be the key. Hidden mechanisms liked to hide where they expected no one to look: under cloth, behind ornament, in the shadow between column and wall.
A shout rose — a team had found a trapdoor below, and someone yanked it open just in time to tumble through. The path they took clicked and unlatched as they went, and another group followed by sinking a hole through the ground that led them into the same subterranean seam. Triumph and curses mixed as the first two teams disappeared through the gap.
Legge moved without fanfare. He stepped from shadow into the lamplight and began pulling the red fabric down from the pillars, one long strip at a time, exposing the cold stone beneath. A rival team noticed and copied the action; their pry-bar flashed, a secret seam split, and they slithered past the pillars into a carved channel that opened beyond the bannered colonnade. Legge's jaw hardened. Anger flared, quick and clean — then passed. He did not shout. He only turned and measured the new opening with a glance.
Shawn's smirk deepened at the sight of the panic: useful effort, predictable waste. He threw a glance Lucas's way, curious if boredom could be confused for strategy.
Legge's voice broke the bubble of calculation. "What should we do?" The question was clipped— a rare request for cooperation from the man who kept to himself. For the first time it held a small promise of teamwork.
Lucas's answer came low and tight, "Drew, start hitting the walls — consistently. Not to break them, just to test the mortar. Find the soft spots." He pointed to the pillars. "Legge, watch the other teams. If they find an exit, note how they do it. Don't blindcopy — understand. If a path opens, we use it; if not, we make one."
Drew cracked his knuckles and grinned through grit. "On it."
Legge inclined his head, the movement small but immediate. He shifted to the edge of the carpet, eyes already catching the angles of a dozen teams, cataloguing their movements. Around them the chamber roared on — blows landed, banners dropped, the trapdoor above still fluttering like a pulse. Lucas kept his face calm, but inside a tight focus gathered: they had a plan now, crude and honest, and it moved through the team like a new current.
Shawn stood, stretched one shoulder like a man bored of gravity, and let his eyes wander across the chamber with the same casual indifference he used on people. Lucas watched him—watched everything—until the echoing din of a hundred desperate hands thudded into his focus and gripped his patience. He shut his eyes, pulled the noise away, and let the scene replay slowly in his head: the snap of the examiner, the way the floor had folded under them, the odd lack of shock on anyone's face during the change.
Energy left signatures, Lucas thought. Teleportation, traps, illusions—none of it happened in a perfect silence. Someone should have felt it. Someone should have… reacted. The idea settled cold and bright.
He opened his eyes and caught Shawn's fingertip skim the purple carpet. A fine scorch bloomed where skin met weave—tiny ritual-burn marks, not careless, but testing. The smudge of smoke confirmed it: the carpet was more than cloth.
Lucas summoned Drew and Legge without the drama of shouting. They came at once, breathless from effort and scraping tile, and Lucas drew them close enough to whisper. "Listen," he said. "This room is a lie. Stone, pillars, banners—mirrors. Energy holds them together. The carpet is the source."
Legge's brow tightened. Drew's face darkened, and for a heartbeat Lucas thought his words had landed like a blade. Then the room did what rooms do when hope surfaces: it turned louder. Teams fought harder, walls took blows. Someone found a seam and slid through; another team shoved rocks into a gap and vanished. Panic stripped the air of thought.
Drew's hand went to the carpet almost without thinking—fist cocked to punch. Lucas grabbed his wrist. "Don't," he hissed.
"Then what do you expect us to do?" Drew snapped, the sound raw. He jerked his arm free and stamped a foot as if the chamber itself had offended him. "Even with your 'mirror' theory, we can't—how do we even pass? How are we supposed to be the last team standing if we can't find a way out?"
Lucas blinked. The anger in Drew wasn't just about the trial; it was a pressure valve that had been shoved down for hours. He could see it then—the hollow weariness behind the outrage. "How long have we been here?" Drew demanded, eyes bright. "I don't even know how long. My arms feel like they're going to tear from my sockets."
To Lucas it had felt like an hour. To Drew, an unending grind. Lucas realized what lay under the question: time had stretched differently for them.
Shawn's voice came from the carpet's far edge, flat and almost bored. "It's not the adrenaline, Lucas," he called. "This carpet is the source. That's why those off the weave feel time slipping—because their energy is draining faster. In short, if you stay outside long enough, people start to go mad."