"Everybody okay?" Rowan's voice carried through the trees, rough with sleep and smoke. "We leave in five."
Morning, technically. But the forest didn't care. The canopy strangled most of the light; what little broke through painted everything a dull gray-green. The air clung heavy with mist and the sweet rot of old leaves.
Ezra rubbed his eyes, still half-dead from the night before. No one looked awake — just bodies moving because stopping meant dying. Boots sank into the mud. Someone coughed. Someone else swore quietly about blisters.
He didn't blame them. After this long in the Trial, everyone looked hollowed out — shadows of the students they'd been.
Rowan was the only one who still moved with purpose. He checked blades, counted heads, barked orders like the forest wasn't listening. His voice cut through the
damp air like a blade.
"Soren, Atlas — front. You're the biggest targets. If something jumps us, let it hit you first."
Soren smirked. "Good to know you care."
"Ezra, Nora, Rin — middle," Rowan continued. "Eyes open. No wandering."
He glanced over his shoulder. "Cassian, you're with me. Rear guard. No one gets left behind."
There were fewer of them now. Maybe twenty, counting the ones too slow to matter in a fight. The young ones clung to weapons like lifelines; the older ones carried their silence like armor. Ezra pitied them all.
The Trial didn't care who it took — young, strong, desperate. It just took.
They started moving. The sound of their march was swallowed almost instantly, the forest drinking it whole. Shafts of light stabbed down through the mist, catching on the wet bark of trees that looked like old bones.
Ezra slowed without meaning to. The air here felt familiar — heavy, electric. The roots twisting out of the soil, the scorched black bark, the faint ozone sting that clung to the back of his throat.
He knew this place.
"Rowan," he murmured, falling into step beside him. "I've been here before."
Rowan turned his head slightly. "You sure?"
Ezra nodded. "That ridge up ahead — there were things here. Watching."
Rowan's jaw tightened. "Then we're back where it started."
He raised his voice. "Stay sharp. Eyes forward. You see movement, you don't chase it. Keep formation."
The words rippled through the group like a chill. The young recruits tightened their grips on their spears. The older ones muttered prayers.
Behind Ezra, a dry laugh cracked the tension. "Keep your heads down, children," an old man rasped. "The forest bites back."
Ezra turned. The speaker was wiry and bent, leaning on a crooked staff capped with a shard of metal. His eyes were bright — too bright — the kind that looked like they'd seen every trick and learned a few new ones.
"You've been here before?" Ezra asked.
The old man's grin showed too many teeth. "Longer than you'd think. Name's Varik. Don't worry, boy — if something eats you, I'll scream nice and loud."
"Less talking," Rowan called back.
Varik chuckled under his breath and fell into line.
The forest changed as they walked — darker, colder. Trees pressed closer until the path barely existed. The air smelled thick, sour-sweet, like sap and old blood. Every few minutes, Ezra thought he saw movement between the trunks — a ripple of color, a shift in the mist. Each time he blinked, it was gone.
Hours passed. The sun never broke through. Time was just footsteps and breath.
Then the path widened.
A clearing opened like a wound in the forest — its floor glittering with hundreds of shards. They gleamed faintly in the half-light, catching on the fog, pulsing softly with resonance.
The group stopped as one.
"Boost shards," someone whispered.
Ezra felt it too — that hum under his skin, the pull that whispered touch me, use me. A fortune in raw power scattered at their feet.
Rowan lifted his hand. "Hold position."
No one moved. Even the air felt frozen.
Rowan didn't stop. He just stepped forward — right past the shards, never looking down, every motion deliberate.
The others hesitated. "Sir?" one of the recruits stammered. "Aren't we—"
"We're not touching those," Rowan said. "Keep moving."
Disbelief rippled through the column. Ezra could feel it, the tension thick enough to taste. Some of them stared at the shards like starving men staring at food. But one by one, they followed.
The shards hummed as they passed — low, almost laughing.
By the time they cleared the far edge of the clearing, the sky had dimmed to ash. The air turned colder, the light bleeding out fast. Rowan called a halt near a narrow stream. They dropped their packs without a word.
Ezra sank beside a fallen log. His legs ached. His thoughts wouldn't stop replaying the way those shards had shimmered — too perfect, too easy.
The forest stayed silent. Even the insects had gone still.
Then Varik spoke.
"Funny thing," he said from the edge of the firelight, turning his staff lazily. "Never seen a commander walk past free power before."
Rowan didn't look up. "That wasn't power. It was bait."
Varik chuckled. "You think everything's bait."
"I'm alive because of it."
"Could be," the old man said mildly. "Or maybe you're just scared of what you don't understand."
A few of the younger recruits shifted closer to the fire, eyes darting between them. Varik noticed. He always noticed.
Later, when Rowan left to check the perimeter, Varik leaned forward, voice dropping to a whisper that carried just enough.
"You know," he murmured, eyes glinting in the firelight, "those shards could keep us alive. Boost your resonance for days. Maybe even get you out of this forest."
One of the boys swallowed. "Rowan said—"
"Rowan's tired," Varik interrupted, smiling. "Didn't even look at them. He doesn't care if you survive. He just wants a tidy headcount when you die."
He let the words hang there, heavy and sweet. "You think I'm wrong, go see for yourself. Pick up one shard. Just one."
No one answered, but Ezra saw it — the hesitation, the hunger. The flicker in their eyes.
He sat a little apart from them, half-listening, half pretending not to. The old man's voice had the same pull as the shards themselves: patient, poisonous, inevitable.
"Hey. Stop it."
The voice cut through the low murmur.
Ezra looked up. Milo sat beside Kiva — thin, sharp-eyed, anger making his voice shake. "Stop using the kids for your own gain."
Varik turned slowly, the faintest smile curving his lips. "I haven't done anything," he said lightly, that sickly smile never leaving his face. He shifted his gaze to Kiva. "Right, little one?"
Kiva stammered, looking away. "N–no…"
"See?" Varik said. "Even Kiva agrees with me."
"Shut up, old man, before I cut out your tongue," Mara muttered, her knife glinting faintly in the firelight.
Varik only laughed, soft and rasping.
Ezra rubbed at his eyes, exhaustion dragging him down. He hadn't really paid attention to the others before — not the way he should have.
Between Atlas's seizures and Rowan's constant commands, he'd lost track of who was even left.
Soren. Atlas. Rowan. Cassian. Nora. Rin.
Milo. Kiva. Mara. Varik.
A handful of younger recruits still clinging to hope, and two older stragglers — a gray-haired woman who hadn't spoken once, and a limping man who refused to stop.
Fifteen. Maybe twenty still alive. Out of dozens.
It didn't feel like survival anymore. It felt like taking turns waiting for the end.
Ezra stared into the fire until the smoke stung his eyes. The flames swayed, thin and uncertain.
To his left, Cassian sat in silence, elbows on his knees, gaze fixed on the fire. It was strange seeing him quiet. Back at the Academy, Cassian had been a storm — always laughing, fighting, moving. Now he barely spoke. The Trial had burned off everything reckless, leaving something colder behind.
Cassian shifted his boots, restless. Something clicked under his heel.
"Hold up," he said.
Rowan turned from where he was checking packs. "What is it?"
Cassian bent, pulling a scrap of fabric from beneath the damp leaves. It came free with a hiss of mud — blackened at the edges, the air around it sharp with the scent of ozone.
Ezra's gut twisted. "That's resonance burn."
The others gathered close. Nora turned the cloth over carefully, eyes narrowing at the mark scorched into the corner — the half-burned Academy insignia.
"Asli's," she whispered.
The word hit the group like a held breath breaking.
Even the forest seemed to listen.
Then Varik laughed, low and dry. "Or maybe someone wants you to think that," he said. "The Trial loves a good joke before it bites."
"Enough," Rowan snapped.
Varik only smiled, tapping his staff against the ground. The metal tip glowed faintly, out of sync with the fire's rhythm. Ezra noticed — filed it away.
Rowan folded the cloth and tucked it into his coat. "We move at first light," he said. "If Asli's out there, we find him."
No one argued.
When Ezra finally lay down, the fire was almost gone, just embers and smoke. But he could still see the faint pulse from Varik's staff through the dark — steady, unnatural, like a heartbeat that didn't belong to anything living.
He told himself it was nothing. Just the fire.
But he didn't sleep.