The villa lights came on one by one — not because anyone commanded them to, but because the Academy decided they were necessary again.
They returned in silence.
Boots scraped marble. Someone's breath hitched and didn't recover. The doors sealed behind them with a sound too soft to be comforting.
For a moment, no one spoke.
The long table at the center of the villa was unchanged — polished, empty, indifferent. The same seats. The same distance between them.
Only the people had shifted.
Melissa rested her weapon case against a chair she didn't sit in.
Olenna leaned against the wall, eyes unfocused, fingers pressing into her sleeve as if checking she was still there. Her horns were dim.
Rek'thar's knuckles were split open. He didn't bother to look at them.
Sol-Vaar lowered himself onto the floor instead of a seat, heat still rolling off him in faint distortions.
Cairn stood near the far window, his reflection overlapping with the night beyond the glass.
Amos sat.
No one remembered him taking the chair.
Eghosa remained standing.
Her legs trembled — not from weakness, but from memory. Gravity had taught her a language her body had not forgotten.
A faint chime echoed through the villa.
Their identifiers pulsed once.
Not brighter.
Different.
No one checked the numbers.
Melissa broke the silence first.
"So," she said, voice steady enough to lie with.
"Who wants to go first?"
No one answered.
Outside the villa, the Academy watched.
The silence stretched too long.
Rek'thar's breathing changed first.
At the start it was subtle — a shift in rhythm, too fast on the inhale, too slow on the release. His shoulders tensed, muscles rolling beneath scarred skin where fur should have been, as if preparing for an impact that never came.
Then he laughed.
Once.
Short. Broken. Wrong.
Everyone turned.
Rek'thar looked down at his hands and flexed them. The blood had dried dark between his fingers.
"They didn't stop," he said.
No one asked who.
"They kept coming. Smaller first. Then bigger. Then smarter."
His claws dug into the marble table. The surface cracked beneath the pressure.
"I killed until the ground changed color," he continued, his voice low, almost calm. "And when I thought it was over—"
He stopped.
His jaw tightened.
"It learned."
The word hung in the air.
Rek'thar took a step back. Then another. His spine met the wall. His knees buckled and he caught himself with one arm, breath tearing out of him in sharp, involuntary bursts.
"I almost died," he said hoarsely.
"I had to give up."
No alarm sounded. No recall force intervened.
The Academy let it happen.
Melissa moved immediately.
She didn't rush him. She didn't touch him. Instead, she stepped into the center of the room — grounding the space by occupying it.
"Okay," she said calmly. Too calmly.
"Pause."
She looked at Rek'thar, then deliberately away, giving him space to exist without being watched.
"You're safe now," she continued. "You survived long enough. That matters."
Rek'thar didn't respond.
Melissa turned to the rest of them.
"Listen. What we went through wasn't training. It was exposure."
She paused.
"The Academy isn't testing skill. It's testing adaptation under isolation."
Her gaze flicked briefly to Amos.
Then back to the group.
"So we do this properly. One at a time. No dramatics. No filling gaps for each other."
A breath.
"Facts only. Then we connect them."
She looked back at Rek'thar, her voice softening.
"When you're ready, you can continue. If not—"
She shifted her attention.
"I'll start."
Melissa folded her arms — not hesitating, but sequencing.
"When I entered the Weapon Simulation," she began, "I assumed it would test proficiency."
She shook her head once.
"It didn't."
The room seemed to lean closer.
"There were no weapons at first. Just stations. Empty racks. No instructions."
She glanced around.
"Then the room mirrored me."
Olenna frowned. "Mirrored how?"
"My assumptions," Melissa replied. "What I reached for appeared. What I ignored disappeared."
She inhaled slowly.
"The first weapon was familiar. Balanced. Easy. I was good with it."
A pause.
"So the system escalated."
Her fingers tightened at her sleeve.
"It introduced inefficiencies. Grip flaws. Weight imbalances. Delays in manifestation. Every time I adapted, it removed something else."
Rek'thar lifted his head. "It wanted failure."
Melissa nodded.
"The weapons became riddles. Imperfect. Dangerous. Some would malfunction. Some would explode if used wrong."
A brief pause.
"One blaster had two triggers. One fired. The other detonated."
Silence.
"At some point," she continued, "I wasn't just mastering weapons anymore. I was repairing them. Rebuilding them."
She exhaled.
"So I stopped."
Eghosa tilted her head. "Stopped?"
"I chose to stop," Melissa said. "And the system accepted it."
"I don't know why."
She straightened.
"That's when the ranking board updated."
Her eyes lingered on Amos a moment longer than necessary.
"The Zones aren't measuring power," she said. "They're measuring survivability. Limits. Adaptation."
No one spoke.
"If Rek'thar's ground learns, and mine adapts," Melissa concluded, "then the Academy isn't sorting us by strength."
She turned toward Eghosa.
The room had settled into a loose circle.
Everyone had spoken — not fully, but enough.
Someone finally looked at Amos.
No one asked.
They didn't need to.
He sat slightly apart, a children's book resting open on his knee, thumb marking a page he wasn't reading.
"What about the Reality Simulation?" Melissa asked carefully.
Amos looked up.
"It isn't a place," he said.
That alone drew attention.
"It's layers. Divergent continuities. Possibilities folded on themselves."
He closed the book.
"The system there doesn't just test combat, endurance, or control."
A pause.
"It tests anchoring."
"Anchoring to what?" Olenna asked.
"Anything," Amos replied. "A belief. A memory. A role. Even fear."
Silence thickened.
"The simulations are immersive enough," he continued, "that you don't notice the transition between realities."
Rek'thar frowned. "Then how do you know when you've passed?"
"You don't."
Melissa's eyes narrowed. "Then what happens if you fail?"
Amos smiled faintly.
"You stay."
No explanation followed.
He opened his book again.
"That's all."
To an outsider, it would seem easy.
No injuries. No exhaustion. No visible cost.
Eghosa watched him closely.
For the first time, she wondered what he had faced.
"And you?" Melissa asked gently.
Eghosa exhaled.
"The Gravity Chamber… isn't about strength."
Rek'thar huffed once. "Everything is about strength."
"That's what it punishes first," Eghosa replied.
She closed her eyes.
"At the entrance, gravity was normal. Familiar. The system waits. Then it increases weight in increments so small you don't notice."
"Until you do," Cairn said.
"Until breathing becomes negotiable," she said. "Until thinking slows."
She swallowed.
"It doesn't crush you. It convinces you to stop."
"You rest," she continued. "And when you do, the gravity increases again."
Sol-Vaar's wings twitched. "Then how do you leave?"
"You don't fight it," Eghosa said. "You decide standing matters more than relief."
A pause.
"I don't know how long I was there. At some point, my body stopped responding properly."
Rek'thar studied her. "Yet you walked out."
"Because I realized it doesn't stop when you endure enough," she said quietly.
"It stops when you give up."
Silence.
"That wasn't training," Melissa said.
"No," Eghosa agreed. "It was a.....?."
The villa lights dimmed.
Not flickering.
Lowering.
A harmonic pressure filled the room.
"This isn't local," Melissa said. "It's Academy-wide."
Their identifiers ignited.
White.
A projection unfolded.
ACADEMY NOTICE
ZONE ACTIVITY REVIEW — DAY ONE
SURVIVAL STATUS: ONGOING
Names appeared — sorted by engagement intensity.
Then another panel.
CASUALTY LOG — ZONE 3
19 Withdrawn
18 Dead
1 Critical
NOTE:
Zone death does not indicate error.
It indicates self-overestimation.
Silence.
"They aren't training us," Amos said calmly.
"They're filtering."
The final line appeared.
NEXT UPDATE: RANK ADJUSTMENT — 48 HOURS
The lights returned.
The villa felt smaller.
No one spoke.
Eghosa felt the weight again — not gravity, but certainty.
Some Zones did not test power.
They tested whether you knew when to stop.
That was the difference.
And the eighteen who died hadn't known.