The training drill went wrong in less than a second.
Thess had set up the exercise herself. Combat simulation against constructs, magical creations that looked like Unraveling creatures but couldn't actually kill. Painful if they hit. Dangerous if you got swarmed. But not lethal.
That was the theory.
Yuna was mid-dodge when she felt it. A pulse through the CHORD, sharp and urgent, coming from Silence.
Not pain. Not fear.
Warning.
"DOWN!" Silence's notebook couldn't carry the message fast enough, so she did something else. She grabbed the nearest person, Marcus, and yanked him sideways with strength her small frame shouldn't have possessed.
The construct's claw passed through the space where Marcus's head had been.
Not a training claw. A real one.
Metal and magic and killing intent, slicing through air that should have contained Marcus's skull.
"What the hell?" Marcus stumbled, caught himself, stared at the construct.
It had changed. The magical framework that made it safe had cracked, and something else was bleeding through. The construct's eyes, previously dim blue, now burned crimson. Its movements, previously predictable, became erratic. Hungry.
"BREACH!" Thess's voice cut across the training ground. "The construct's been corrupted. This is not a drill. Defensive formation, NOW!"
The team moved.
Aria's voice rang out immediately: "Marcus, Chen Wei, front line. Lyric, illusion cover. David, patterns. Yuna, with me. Silence..."
Silence was already moving.
Her form flickered, phasing partially out of reality, and her eyes had gone distant. Not unfocused. Focused on something else. Something only she could see.
Futures.
Yuna felt it through the CHORD. The girl was watching timelines branch and collapse, searching for the paths that didn't end in blood.
"Silence!" Aria called. "What do you see?"
Silence's hand shot up. Five fingers.
"Five what? Seconds? Constructs?"
Silence pointed left. Then made a slashing motion across her throat.
"Left side attack. Lethal." Aria processed instantly. "Chen Wei, cover left flank. Marcus, intercept anything that gets through."
The corrupted construct charged.
It was faster than the training version. Stronger. The safe parameters had broken completely, and what remained was something closer to a real Unraveling creature.
Chen Wei met it head-on. Her BEDROCK strength let her absorb the impact, but the force drove her back three feet. Sparks flew where claws met hardened skin.
"It's strong!" Chen Wei shouted. "Stronger than the void-hound!"
Marcus joined her. Two BEDROCK users working in tandem, trading positions, covering each other's blind spots.
But the construct wasn't alone.
More emerged from the training ground's edges.
Three. Five. Seven corrupted constructs, the magical safeguards failing one by one.
"Thess!" Yuna shouted. "What's happening?"
Thess stood at the edge of the chaos, hands glowing gold, trying to regain control of the constructs. Her face was strained. Sweat beaded on her forehead.
"Something's interfering with the enchantments. Outside force. I can't..." She gritted her teeth. "I can't shut them down."
"Can you destroy them?"
"Not without risking you. The backlash would hit everyone in the training ground."
Seven constructs. Seven summons. No safe exit.
Yuna's wings manifested without conscious thought. Silver light blazing from her back, stronger than yesterday, steadier. The System's acceleration was working.
"Aria! What's the play?"
"Working on it!" Aria's wheelchair spun as she tracked all seven constructs simultaneously. Her RIFT Attunement flickered in her eyes, tactical overlays only she could see. "They're coordinating. Someone's controlling them."
"Who?"
"Don't know. Don't care right now. Lyric! Can you blind them?"
Lyric's hands moved. Colors exploded across the training ground, brilliant and disorienting. Two constructs stumbled, their corrupted eyes overwhelmed by the RADIANCE illusions.
"Temporary!" Lyric shouted. "They're adapting!"
"David! Weaknesses?"
David's voice was shaky but present: "The corruption is centered in their cores. Chest area. If we can hit the core, they should destabilize."
"Good. Marcus, Chen Wei, aim for the chest. Yuna, aerial distraction. Silence..."
Silence grabbed Aria's arm.
The touch was ice-cold, and Yuna felt the CHORD pulse as something passed between them. Information. Vision. Future.
Aria's eyes went wide.
"Everyone DOWN! NOW!"
The team dropped without questioning.
A wave of energy passed over their heads. Crimson light, crackling with corruption, sweeping across the training ground at head height.
If they'd been standing, it would have decapitated all of them.
"Silence saw it," Aria breathed. "Thirty seconds ahead. She saw the wave."
Silence nodded, form flickering with the effort of maintaining her temporal sight.
"How long can you hold that?" Yuna asked.
Silence held up fingers. Three. Maybe four.
"Three minutes of foresight?"
Shake of the head. Silence wrote frantically in the air, finger leaving trails of ghostly light:
30 SECONDS. MAX. EXHAUSTING.
"Then we have thirty seconds of warning." Aria's mind was already working. "That's enough. Silence, keep watching. Call out anything lethal. Everyone else, we end this fast."
The constructs regrouped. Seven of them, crimson eyes locked on the seven summons.
"On my mark," Aria said. "Three. Two. One. MOVE!"
The fight was chaos.
But organized chaos. Aria's voice cut through the noise, directing traffic, anticipating attacks before they landed. Every time a construct moved to flank, Chen Wei was already there. Every time one tried to break through, Marcus intercepted.
And every time something lethal approached, Silence warned them.
A claw swipe that would have gutted David. Silence yanked him back two seconds before impact.
A charge that would have crushed Lyric. Silence's warning let them phase their illusion body just in time.
A coordinated strike from three constructs at once. Silence saw it coming, and Aria repositioned everyone before it happened.
Thirty seconds of foresight. It didn't sound like much.
It was everything.
Yuna flew overhead, wings blazing silver, drawing attention and dodging attacks. Her CHORD ability let her feel the team's emotions, and she used it to coordinate without words. A pulse of confidence to Marcus when he hesitated. A wave of calm to David when fear crept in.
CHORD and ECHO working together. Emotion and time. Connection and prediction.
The constructs didn't stand a chance.
Marcus destroyed the first one.
His fist drove through its chest, finding the corrupted core, and the construct exploded into harmless magical sparks.
Chen Wei took the second. A spinning kick that cracked the core on impact.
David, surprising everyone including himself, identified the weakness in a third and called out the exact angle for Lyric to exploit. An illusion blade, semi-real from concentrated RADIANCE, pierced the core.
Four. Five. Six.
The seventh was the strongest. The most corrupted. It had learned from watching the others fall.
It went for Silence.
The girl who kept warning them. The eyes that saw danger coming. If the construct could eliminate her, the team would be blind.
It moved faster than anything before. A blur of corruption and killing intent.
Silence saw it coming. Of course she did. But seeing and dodging were different things.
Her form flickered. Tried to phase. But the exhaustion of maintaining foresight had drained her. She was too slow.
The claw descended.
Yuna moved without thinking.
Wings folding, body diving, she put herself between Silence and the killing blow.
The claw hit her shoulder instead.
Pain exploded through her body. Real pain, not training pain. The corruption in the construct's attack burned where it touched, spreading ice and fire through her veins.
Yuna screamed.
But she didn't fall.
Her wings flared brighter than ever before. Silver light erupting from her back, not just manifesting but blazing, filling the training ground with brilliance that hurt to look at.
The CHORD pulsed.
Connection. Bond. Protection.
Yuna felt the team through the light. All of them. Marcus's strength. Aria's precision. Silence's vision. Lyric's beauty. Chen Wei's discipline. David's courage.
And she pushed.
Not an attack. Something else. The CHORD Attunement wasn't about destruction. It was about connection. About bonds. About the strength that came from caring about something beyond yourself.
The light hit the construct.
It didn't burn. It unmade. The corruption couldn't survive contact with pure emotional energy. The construct's form wavered, cracked, and then dissolved into nothing.
Silence.
The training ground was silent.
Yuna collapsed.
The wings vanished. Her shoulder screamed. Blood soaked through her training clothes where the claw had torn flesh.
But she was alive. They all were.
"Yuna!" Marcus reached her first. His hands, those careful hands, pressed against her wound. "Stay still. You're bleeding."
"I noticed," Yuna managed.
"That was stupid." His voice cracked. "Throwing yourself in front of that thing was stupid."
"Would you have let it kill Silence?"
Marcus didn't answer. They both knew he wouldn't have.
Thess arrived, hands glowing with healing light. The gold washed over Yuna's shoulder, and the pain receded to a dull throb.
"The corruption is neutralized," Thess said. Her voice was strange. Shaken. "What you did... that shouldn't have been possible. CHORD Attunement doesn't work like that."
"Apparently it does." Yuna winced as Thess's healing probed deeper. "What happened to the constructs? Why did they corrupt?"
Thess's jaw tightened. "I don't know. But I intend to find out."
Silence appeared at Yuna's side. Her form was barely visible, exhausted from the foresight effort. But she held up her notebook with trembling hands:
YOU SAVED ME.
"We save each other," Yuna said. "That's the deal, remember?"
Silence's eyes glistened.
THANK YOU.
The infirmary was quiet.
Yuna lay on a cot, shoulder bandaged, body aching. The corruption had been purged, but the wound would take time to heal. Magic could only do so much.
The team gathered around her. All six of them, crammed into the small space, refusing to leave.
"What you did out there," Aria said slowly. "The light. The way you destroyed that construct. I've never seen anything like it."
"Neither have I," Yuna admitted. "It just... happened."
"CHORD Attunement," Marcus said. "Emotional power. You cared about protecting Silence, and the Attunement responded."
"Caring doesn't usually generate combat abilities."
"Maybe it does for you." Lyric tilted their head, artistic eye assessing. "You're not just feeling emotions, darling. You're weaponizing them. Love as a sword. Protection as a shield."
Yuna thought about it. The moment she'd moved. The absolute certainty that she couldn't let Silence die. The way her power had responded to that certainty.
Not rage. Not fear.
Love.
"One hundred sixteen days," she said quietly. "I wonder what else we'll discover."
Silence held up her notebook:
TOGETHER. WE DISCOVER IT TOGETHER.
The team nodded.
Outside, Thess stood in the ruined training ground, staring at the spot where the constructs had corrupted. Her hands trembled at her sides. Not with exhaustion.
With recognition.
She'd seen corruption like that before. Forty years ago. When the last group of insufficient summons had been murdered.
Something was hunting them again.
And this time, she might not be strong enough to stop it.
[END CHAPTER 13]