The courtyard for Practical Synergy Training was nothing short of a coliseum. Towering warded pillars ringed the perimeter, pulsing faintly with mana. The air buzzed with residual enchantments and burnt ozone, as though the field itself was alive, waiting to feast on mistakes. Students filed in by the dozen, dressed in the standardized light combat robes of the academy, resistant to fire, reinforced against blunt force, and hex-repellent up to a medium curse. Kael and Seret stood to one side, near a training rack of practice blades and rune-scrolls, surveying the battlefield like predators dropped into an unfamiliar biome.
"I don't like this," Seret muttered under her breath, arms folded. "Look at how they've spaced the groups. There's no pattern. No logic."
Kael's eyes scanned the instructors standing above the arena's far edge, robed in deep indigo with mirrored masks obscuring their faces. "They're testing interpersonal magic compatibility," he said. "Mixing volatile personalities on purpose."
A voice cut through the murmurs. "Team Twelve, Kael Varin, Seret Veil, Rei Malen, Liora Vessanel, Dren Othal. Central platform. Now."
Rei stomped past them, fiery ponytail bouncing with each step. "Oh stars, no. I'm with you two?" She shot a look at Kael. "I hope that sword of yours is more than just for show, shadow-boy."
Liora followed quietly behind her, silent, eyes scanning each teammate with a clinical disinterest. "This will be a waste of potential," she said plainly. "None of you are rune-synchronized. Especially him." She pointed to Kael. "His core's unstable."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "And yours is cold as a grave."
Before the tension could bloom into sparks, Dren approached with a small bow. "Let's not tear each other apart before the trial even begins. We're here to defend a point, not assassinate each other."
The team climbed onto the central platform. An arcane circle flared to life beneath their feet, pale blue, then violet, then crimson. Walls of hexstone rose around them, forming a miniature fort, and the simulation began with a deep gong.
Water elementals surged from the surrounding ground, conjured by instructors. They took on the shape of armored warriors made entirely of crashing waves. Each movement they made left puddles that twisted into seeking tendrils.
"Barrier up!" Kael shouted.
Seret leapt to the right flank, glyphs flaring across her wrists as she launched a barrage of binding threads. "We're flanked, three on this side!"
Rei let out a war cry and hurled a firebomb straight into the crowd of elementals, scorching the training field and melting half the faux soldiers. But the backlash singed the warding lines. "Oops," she said with a sheepish grin. "Might've overdone it."
Liora, from the rear, chanted a long-form incantation under her breath, glyphs forming like a halo around her hands. "You fools are wasting mana and disrupting the calibration cycle. You're contaminating the field."
"Oh no, not contaminating the field!" Rei mocked, rolling her eyes. "Are we ruining your science fair, princess?"
Kael stepped between them, deflecting a crashing elemental blade with his own rune-inscribed sword. "Focus!"
Another elemental surged in, nearly hitting Dren, who blocked with a defensive glyph shield, but his expression stayed calm.
"They're accelerating. They're… learning."
And they were. The second wave moved faster. Cleaner. They adapted to the team's disunity. And then, one broke through.
Liora snapped her hands forward, launching an ice spike that narrowly missed Kael's shoulder, impaling the elemental in front of him. "Get. Out. Of. My. Casting. Radius."
Kael's patience snapped. "You could've killed me!"
"You're welcome."
Rei was now physically grappling with a semi-liquid elemental, fists blazing. "Will you all shut up and fight?"
The simulation ended in chaos. The fort breached. Water spilling over every edge. Their ward instructor sighed audibly as he dismissed the spell and lowered the barrier.
"You failed the exercise," he said flatly. "And you will repeat it tomorrow. Twice."
Kael's shoulders heaved, soaked in sweat and elemental residue. His eyes met Seret's, who looked ready to kill at least three people.
Rei grinned. "Well… we're definitely not boring."
The locker chamber was stone-walled, damp with condensation, and alive with frustration. Dozens of students changed back into their casual uniforms, but none louder than Team Twelve. The magical dampeners on the walls absorbed surges of irritation like a sponge, but even they couldn't mute the rising voices.
"That was your fault," Liora snapped, ripping her gloves off and setting them neatly into a velvet-lined box. "You're all brute-force lunatics. There's no coordination. No calibration. It's like trying to conduct a symphony with drunk trolls."
Kael, shirt halfway off, tossed it into the laundry chute. "You threw an ice lance through my headspace. I'm starting to think you wanted to rupture my cortex."
"Don't flatter yourself," she replied dryly. "If I wanted you dead, you wouldn't be able to argue about it."
"Okay, okay!" Dren stood between them, hands raised, forcing a smile like it was stapled to his face. "Deep breath, everyone. We'll do better tomorrow. That's the point of the exercise. Learn, adapt, improve. Right?"
"No," Seret growled, pulling her damp hair into a bun. "The point was to expose our weak links. And it did." She glared at Liora. "You're all mind, no instinct. If a blade's in your throat, I doubt you'll recite your precious equations fast enough to stop it."
"I'll take an equation over a tantrum with a dagger any day."
Rei, perched upside down on a bench, legs against the wall, sighed deeply. "I'm starting to think the real test wasn't the elementals. It's seeing how long it takes us to kill each other."
Kael rubbed his temples. "We have to pass tomorrow. Otherwise, they'll separate us into remedial synergy courses. We'll be stuck doing theory with the first-years."
Rei bolted upright. "Ugh, no thanks. They smell like ink and desperation."
Kael ignored her. "We need to figure out how to fight together. We're all strong, but none of us are syncing."
Seret looked at him sideways. "You're not wrong. We're fire, ice, shadow, light, and... whatever Dren is."
Dren raised a finger. "Emotion-weaving. Subset of mnemonic channeling. Technically a form of soul magic."
"Right." Rei scratched her head. "So… feelings. You're the group therapist."
"Essentially, yes," he said with a calm nod.
Rei looked around at the group. "Oh, we are so screwed."
Kael chuckled despite himself. "Let's meet after hours. No instructors. No simulations. Just us, working this out."
Liora crossed her arms. "I don't do 'unsanctioned collaboration.'"
"Then enjoy failing twice tomorrow," Seret said, already walking toward the exit.
Rei bounced after her. "We're getting drinks after, right?"
Seret didn't respond.
Dren lingered. "She'll come around," he said quietly to Kael. "She's just used to being right."
Kael gave a small shrug. "Aren't we all."
Outside, the campus was bathed in golden dusk, the sprawling grounds filled with distant echoes of spellfire practice, laughter, and the occasional arcane explosion. Students wandered in robes and casuals, some levitating notebooks as they walked, others deep in debate over runic syntax. It was another world from where Kael and Seret had come, a world rich with knowledge, structured madness, and infinite potential. It also didn't forgive failure.
The pair walked in silence for a while until Seret broke it.
"I hate them."
Kael raised a brow. "All of them?"
"No. Just most. Especially the ice princess."
"She's not all bad. Just… insufferably confident."
Seret cracked a rare smile. "Takes one to know one."
They passed a floating lamppost flickering to life as night fell, the rune engraved in its bronze stem humming faintly. Kael looked up at the silhouette of the academy towers, dark spires reaching toward the mana-veined sky.
"You think we'll survive this?" he asked.
Seret didn't answer immediately. "Not as we are."
He nodded.
Then she added, "But maybe as something better."
They reached the dorms, the looming marble structure sectioned by house colors, banners fluttering in the wind. From the shadows, a figure watched them, hood drawn, arms folded. A faint shimmer of magic traced the edge of their silhouette.
Unseen. Unheard.
But watching.
The training arena was silent the next morning, save for the low hum of the containment glyphs sketched into every inch of stone. Students from all teams stood in organized clusters, most bleary-eyed and yawning. Team Twelve stood apart, Kael, Seret, Liora, Rei, and Dren, forming a small circle that radiated the awkward heat of five people pretending not to hate each other.
Instructor Varrek paced slowly before them, arms clasped behind his back, boots echoing like war drums. His braided silver hair gleamed under the mana-lamps, his eyes sharp enough to dissect confidence.
"Team Twelve," he said. "You failed your synergy trial. Catastrophically."
Seret flinched.
"Your elemental cohesion was poor. Your runic counters were out of sync. Your formations? A disorganized pile of flailing limbs and egos."
Rei raised a hand. "In our defense, "
"No," Varrek said flatly.
Rei lowered her hand.
"You'll repeat the trial today. This time, with stakes. Fail again, and I split you up. Permanently."
Kael's jaw clenched. He glanced at Seret. She didn't meet his eyes.
Varrek raised a hand, and a pulse of energy radiated from his palm. The floor beneath them rippled, the glyphs lighting up as the arena reconstructed itself, pillars of stone rose, a chasm split the field in two, and shimmering barriers blinked into being.
"Begin," he said.
The world ignited.
A thunderclap of energy blasted outward as golems surged from the edges of the arena, four-armed brutes made of carved obsidian and glowing iron veins, each wielding enchanted weapons. Mana-saturation in the air spiked immediately, tingling against Kael's skin like needles.
"Focus!" Kael shouted. "Form up! Triangle, Seret right, Liora left, Rei and Dren middle!"
Liora hesitated.
"Do it!" Seret barked.
They moved. Kael surged forward, sword unsheathed and blazing with flame-etched runes. He launched himself into a spin, parrying a golem's hammer with the flat of his blade, flames trailing behind him in streaks. Seret danced through shadow, warping from one plane to another in impossible steps, daggers sinking into vulnerable joints.
Liora's ice surged around them in calculated arcs, not wild this time, but precise, constructing barricades and freezing weak points.
Dren stood still, eyes closed, whispering incantations that twisted the air around him. The golems slowed near him, hesitated, turned to each other, confused. Emotional manipulation magic was rare, subtle, but devastating when wielded by someone who knew how to fracture the will.
Rei hovered just above ground level, scattering motes of glowing wind into the battlefield like pollen. Her spells surged with movement, speeding Kael's attacks, warping Seret's trajectory. Their mismatched elements, earlier at war, now curved around one another like braided rivers.
One golem shattered. Then two. Kael locked blades with a third, pushing mana into his sword until the runes along its edge screamed white-hot. "Switch!" he called.
Seret teleported mid-spin and took his place, blades flashing. Kael rolled backward into the next engagement.
They moved as one.
Then a ripple in the glyphs.
A figure appeared on the edge of the battlefield, unauthorized. No crest. No insignia. Hooded.
Rei spotted it first. "Uh, guys?"
The figure raised a hand. A pulse of black light arced outward and struck the nearest golem, which immediately shrieked, convulsed, and exploded into shards of molten stone.
"Who the hell, " Liora began.
The hooded figure disappeared, flickering out like a dying candle.
Instructor Varrek stepped forward, expression tight, hands already forming detection signs.
"Class dismissed," he said. "All of you, out."
"But we passed, " Dren started.
"Out."
They didn't argue. Even Kael could feel it, the wrongness left behind in the air. A magic signature that didn't belong. Not here. Not anywhere near students.
As they exited, Kael felt the weight return. Not from failure this time. But from the gaze of something else. Something that had noticed them.
And hadn't liked what it saw.
The corridors of the Academy buzzed with rumor by midday. Whispers slithered from hall to hall like smoke. A shadowy figure? Did you see that blast? Varrek shut the class down immediately. Dozens of versions were already being exchanged, growing more dramatic with every telling. Some claimed it was a demon; others, a royal spy. One version had the figure riding a spectral horse and breathing soulflame.
Team Twelve said nothing.
Kael sat in the back corner of the dormitory common room, nursing a cup of bitter tonic and staring at his hand. His pulse had finally slowed, but the edge hadn't dulled. Not entirely.
"Don't say it," Seret muttered as she sat beside him, arms crossed tight.
"I wasn't going to," Kael said.
"You were thinking it."
"Was not."
"You were. You've got that smug, 'Seret, I told you something weird was going on' look."
Kael blinked. "I have a look?"
"You have several."
Across the room, Liora paced in tight circles. "That wasn't just an unauthorized guest," she snapped. "It knew how to bypass layered glyphs and adaptive sentries. I couldn't even feel it enter. That's practically impossible."
"Maybe it's from the cult," Rei offered, still hugging her pillow like a lifeline. "They do creepy stuff like that, don't they?"
Kael and Seret stiffened at the same time.
"...Or not," Rei added hastily. "Could also be, like, a rogue professor. Or a disgruntled summoner. Or a warlock banned from library privileges."
"Do not joke about library bans," Dren muttered from his corner. "That's dark magic."
"Whoever it was," Kael said slowly, "they were watching us. Not just the class. Us specifically."
Liora stopped pacing. "You sure?"
Kael didn't answer. The heat still prickled along his spine where that figure's aura had swept past him, like fingers dragging through smoke. It had felt intentional.
Rei yawned. "Well, I'm going to die of overthinking. Or starvation. I vote kitchen raid."
Dren perked up. "I second that."
They scattered for food. Seret didn't move. She stayed beside Kael, legs drawn up, staring ahead.
Kael hesitated, then asked, "You okay?"
She didn't answer immediately. When she did, it was quiet.
"You saw how easy it was for that thing to get in. Past barriers. Past instructors. Past everything."
"Yeah."
"So imagine what else could get in," she said. "Imagine what could be sent in."
Her voice had an edge, calm, cold. Not afraid. Preparing.
Kael looked at her, and something in his chest tightened. Not panic. Not even dread.
It was the quiet awareness that the peace they'd just started to taste, however artificial, however temporary, was already beginning to crack.
Later that night, a summons came from Instructor Meran. A private audience. Just the five of them.
The team filed in, bracing themselves. But the office wasn't lined with punishment scrolls or detention slips. It was filled with ancient charts, shimmering glyph-maps, and spell matrices suspended in glass.
Meran stood with his hands behind his back, watching a floating globe of mana swirl in a jar. "Do you know what you did today?" he asked without turning.
"We passed," Seret said warily.
"You did more than that," Meran replied.
"You showed the Academy something it rarely sees, an unstable team, forged in pressure, surviving."
He turned to face them. His gaze was sharper than normal. "There are things moving beneath the surface of this school. Rivalries. Factions. Lineages. It will get worse."
"Worse than rogue shadow warlocks?" Rei whispered.
Meran didn't smile. "I'm keeping you together. Against better judgment. Because your enemies are not just in the arena. They're in these walls. And they're watching."
He dismissed them with a wave. Kael lingered.
"Sir," he said. "What was that thing?"
Meran didn't blink. "A test."
Kael's blood ran cold. "A test from who?"
The instructor didn't answer. Only turned back to the swirling globe.
Kael left the room with a chill in his spine and one thought repeating like a curse: We're not supposed to know yet.