The three girls stared at the broken boy. He was on his hands and knees in the dirt, crawling toward an old oak tree like a wounded animal.
The sight was just… weird. He had won. He had taken out Lyra, one of the strongest students in the test. But he looked like he had lost everything.
Isolde's perfect, smiling mask had vanished. Her ice-blue eyes were narrowed, her mind racing a mile a minute.
She was a master of plans, a puppeteer who saw everyone as a piece in her grand game. But this piece, this broken, pathetic-looking boy, had just moved on his own and done something impossible.
It was a problem she could not solve. A variable she hadn't accounted for.
'How did he do it?' she whispered to herself, her voice a low, frustrated hiss. 'He has no affinity. His stats are garbage.
Lyra should have turned him to ash in seconds. Was it a hidden artifact? A secret skill? Or just… dumb luck?'
The uncertainty of it all was infuriating.
