Ezra woke to firelight.
Not the sterile blue glow of the city's torches. Real fire. Orange. Heavy smoke curling up into the dark.
For a while he didn't move. Just lay there, staring at it.
Could be another trick. Another mask. Another dream the Trial built just to split me open.
Then a voice cut through. "Rowan. He's up."
Ezra turned his head. Milo crouched nearby, thin as ever, glasses cracked along one rim, hair sticking out like straw. He looked like he'd been carved down to bone and stubbornness.
Ezra rasped, "Milo." He wasn't sure if it was meant as a question or a curse.
Milo's mouth twitched into something almost like a smile. "Told them you weren't dead."
Bootsteps approached. Rowan stepped into the fire's glow. Taller than Ezra remembered. Broader. Sun-browned skin, arms scarred from work that hadn't existed at the Academy. His face was tired, but the relief was real.
"Ezra," Rowan said, voice rough. "Didn't think I'd see you again."
Ezra pushed himself upright, head swimming. "You knocked me out."
Rowan's jaw tightened, but he didn't flinch. "Only way to bring you in. The city doesn't let strays walk free."
Ezra let out a dry breath. "Next time, just ask."
Rowan didn't rise to it. Just gave a humorless nod, as if he'd expected nothing else.
Shapes stirred at the edge of the firelight. Ezra's eyes adjusted: a camp. Rough shelters built from hides and poles, shadows bent over weapons, others stitching torn cloth. Maybe twenty people in all. A colony scraped together out of Trial scraps.
Faces emerged in pieces. Nora leaned against a post, her arms bound in stained bandages. She was thinner, sharper around the edges, but her stare hadn't dulled.
Cassian sat a little apart, quiet, a knife balanced between his fingers. He didn't speak. Just met Ezra's eyes and dipped his chin once.
Ezra swallowed the lump in his throat. Half of him had been ready for silence. Graves without markers. Seeing them here — still breathing, still real — twisted something in his chest he didn't have a name for.
But not all of them were here.
"Where's Silas?" he asked. His voice cracked more than he wanted. "Octavia? Asli?"
The camp went still. Milo looked at the ground. Nora's jaw set. Even Cassian's knife stilled. All of them turned, almost in unison, toward Rowan.
Rowan's face changed. Softer first, then shut down. His voice came slow. "We haven't seen Silas. Not once. Not since the Trial began."
Ezra's stomach sank. Of course. The one person the Trial would notice first.
Rowan went on. "Octavia too. No trace. Nothing."
The fire popped. Ezra clenched his fists. Gone, or worse. The Trial doesn't waste bodies. It uses them.
"And Asli?"
Rowan's silence was answer enough. Finally: "He was with us at the start. Helped Milo pull the others together. Made sure we survived those first days. Then he left. No word. Just… gone. Said nothing, but everyone knows why. He's looking for Silas."
Ezra shut his eyes. Stupid. Brave. The same thing, in here.
The weight pressed down harder. Relief at the ones alive. Grief for the ones missing. Anger at the Trial for tearing them apart.
The fire cracked again. And then —
A heavy thud shook the ground.
Ezra's eyes snapped open. A carcass sprawled across the dirt — some beast dragged from the forest, neck torn, blood soaking the earth.
The one who dropped it straightened.
Ezra froze.
Long, dark hair spilling nearly to his waist. Shoulders broader now, frame leaner, but unmistakable. Scars laddered his jaw. Eyes sharp even in the half-light.
Soren.
For a moment Ezra thought the Trial was playing another trick. But no — the weight of his steps, the smell of blood clinging to him, the way he stood as if nothing here could touch him — it was Soren .
He tossed his hair back with one hand, smearing blood across his cheek. His voice came low, casual, almost mocking against the tension that hung in the camp.
"Dinner."
The word echoed. A reminder of how far from normal they were, how far from the Academy's halls.
Ezra stared. Relief knotted with suspicion, with anger, with something else that churned deeper. Soren looked alive, but not untouched. No one was untouched.
Another shadow moved behind him.
Atlas emerged. Noticeably shorter than Soren — not short, just smaller in comparison to giants like Soren and Rowan. He looked worn thin, his frame sharper, hollower. His once neatly parted hair had unraveled, dark blue strands catching the firelight and glinting faintly like wet stone.
His glasses were still there. Crooked, cracked at the rim, but intact. Resting like they always had, as though the Trial hadn't managed to take even that from him.
Ezra's breath hitched. Atlas. Alive too. How many of us are left to find? How many are already gone?
The camp shifted around the two arrivals — people straightening, murmurs threading low. Soren dropped the carcass beside the fire without ceremony, wiping his hands on his shirt, smearing the blood further. Atlas's gaze flicked from the beast to Ezra, unreadable behind the glass.
Ezra felt the heat of the flames crawl up his arms. Relief and unease tangled together. One chance, they'd said back in the dorms. Looking around now — at Rowan, Milo, Nora, Cassian, Soren, Atlas — it felt less like a promise and more like a wager none of them had meant to make.
Ezra learned the camp's rhythm the same way he'd learned the city's — by watching.
It wasn't complicated. Survival never was.
The camp breathed in a rhythm of its own. Not order — not like the city with its drums and painted steps — but survival. Rough, uneven, always close to breaking.
Ezra kept quiet. Better that way. He'd only been here a day, maybe two, and already he felt the weight of too many eyes.
They weren't the Academy. They weren't friends. They were people who had clawed a corner out of the Trial and dared to call it safe.
Safe. Nothing was safe here.
He sat by the fire and watched.
At dawn, two of them — tall, broad Rowan and a skinnier man whose name he caught only in passing — left with bone spears and packs slung across their shoulders. Hunters. They came back hours later dragging half-dead beasts that bled too much, smelled too sweet.
Cassian cut the hides, silent as ever, knife flashing in the light. He didn't talk while he worked. Didn't look at anyone either. Ezra noticed his hands though — steady, precise. Not the hands of a cook. More like someone carving bone into a weapon.
Nora argued with him once. Something about rations, about wasting too much meat over the fire. He ignored her until she smacked his arm, and even then he only looked at her like she was noise. She didn't back down. Ezra marked it down in his head: fire in her voice, not just her eyes.
Milo scribbled in the dirt whenever he had time. Numbers, tallies, lines that didn't make sense to anyone else. Ezra almost asked once, then stopped himself. Better to listen first.
The rest blurred together. Half of them were strangers, half looked half-dead already. A few sharpened weapons, others patched hides. It looked like routine, but Ezra could see the fray at the edges — hunger thinning their patience, fear gnawing holes into their silences.
He leaned back against the hide wall, arms crossed, pretending to rest.
But his eyes tracked everything.
Who slept first. Who ate more than their share. Who kept their hands close to weapons even when they laughed.
The Trial didn't allow trust. Not freely.
Ezra thought: Names. I need names. That's how you start making sense of a place.
He already had a few. Rowan, Milo, Nora, Cassian. The Academy faces. The rest — just shadows with jobs. Hunters. Skinners. Watchers.
Even Rin was working to wedge herself into the rhythm, slipping off into the trees to scout and returning with muttered reports no one asked for. Some listened. Some didn't. Ezra could see the doubt in their eyes when they looked at her.
He understood. He doubted everything too.
The fire popped. Sparks rose, brief and bright before the dark swallowed them. Ezra's stomach growled, but he didn't move for food. Not yet. Not until he understood more.
He rubbed at his wrist, where the mark had spread beneath his skin. It pulsed faintly, like it was reminding him: time isn't yours.
Ezra watched the camp, the people, the shadows that moved just outside the light.
Learning. Counting. Waiting.
Because that was the only way you lived long in the Trial.