We emerged from the dungeon into a twilight that felt wrong after hours of darkness. The iron door groaned shut behind us, sealing the Gauntlet's horrors away. For now.
Medical teams swarmed the moment they saw Dorn's arm—the blackened flesh had stopped spreading, thanks to Elara's frantic healing, but it still looked wrong. They took him away on a stretcher, Dorn protesting weakly that he was "fine, just a scratch." Elara went with him, her face pale but determined.
That left me, Vance, and Mira standing in the cooling evening air, three Memory Shards clutched in Mira's bloodstained hand.
"We need to report this," Vance said quietly. "The collector. The attack. Someone needs to know."
A proctor appeared before we could move—the same iron-haired woman from the Maze entrance. Her eyes swept over us, taking in the wounds, the exhaustion, the shards.
"Party 147. Report."
We told her everything. The bodies. The collector. The way he'd moved, the things he'd said. I left out the part where the dungeon answered my call—I said the roots attacked on their own, triggered by the collector's corruption. Vance shot me a look but didn't contradict.
The proctor listened without interrupting. When we finished, she was silent for a long moment.
"Three shards. That places you in the top twenty parties." Her voice was flat, professional. "The collector's body has been recovered. His employer is... a matter for Academy security. You will not speak of this to anyone. Is that understood?"
We nodded.
"Good. Report to the medical wing for evaluation. Then rest. The third trial will be announced in three days."
She walked away, leaving us standing in the gathering dark.
Vance waited until she was out of earshot. "They're going to cover it up."
"Probably," I agreed.
"That's insane. Someone infiltrated the Academy's most sacred trial. Candidates are dead. And they're just going to—"
"They're going to investigate quietly," Mira interrupted. Her voice was soft, but it cut through Vance's anger like a blade. "Announcing it would cause panic. Candidates would withdraw. Families would demand answers. The Academy's reputation would suffer." She looked at the shards in her hand. "They'll find whoever sent that thing. They just won't tell us how."
Vance opened his mouth, then closed it. For once, he had nothing to say.
---
The medical wing was a blur of white light and antiseptic smells. They poked and prodded me, ran tests that made my core tingle, and declared me "surprisingly functional for someone who spent twelve hours in a dungeon." I didn't mention that most of those hours had been spent unconscious or begging ancient stone for help.
Dorn's arm was saved, barely. The healer said another hour and they'd have had to take it. Dorn laughed at that, then winced when the laughter jostled his bandages. Elara sat by his bed, holding his good hand, looking like she might fall asleep at any moment.
Mira had vanished. Someone said she'd gone to "check on something" and not come back. I suspected she was already hunting the collector's employer on her own. The thought was terrifying and comforting in equal measure.
I found a empty cot in a quiet corner and collapsed onto it. Sleep took me before my head hit the pillow.
---
I dreamed of roots.
Not the angry, protective roots from the dungeon, but the ones inside me—my Sylvan Circuit, pulsing with that strange, green-gold light. In the dream, I could see them clearly, a network of living channels spreading through my body like a map of some unknown country. Five nodes glowed bright: right palm, left foot, solar plexus, spine, left shoulder. Others were forming, tiny sparks of potential waiting to be kindled.
A voice spoke from the darkness between the roots.
"You called to the mountain."
I turned, but there was no one. Only the roots, the nodes, the pulsing light.
"You asked for help. It answered. Do you understand what that means?"
I didn't.
"The mountain remembers, Roy White. It remembers the first trees, the first roots, the first life that crawled from its stone. It remembers you. Not as a mage, not as a candidate, not as a half-breed. As a gardener. One who tends, who nurtures, who protects."
The roots pulsed in unison.
"Such things have not been seen in this age. The Academy will notice. The Five will notice. The darkness will notice." A pause. "You are no longer hidden, little gardener. The world is waking to your presence."
I woke with a start, my heart hammering.
Dawn light filtered through a nearby window. The medical wing was quiet, most of its occupants still sleeping. I sat up, my body aching, my mind spinning.
The dream had felt too real. Too specific.
I looked at my hands—the faint green tracery of my Sylvan Circuit visible beneath the skin. For a moment, I thought I saw the roots from my dream, pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
Then it was gone.
---
The third day of waiting was the hardest.
The first day, we rested. The second day, we were debriefed again—different proctors, same questions, same evasions. By the third day, rumors were spreading like wildfire through the candidate quarters.
"Did you hear? Someone died in the Gauntlet."
"More than someone. A whole party. Wiped out."
"They say it was a monster. Something the Academy lost control of."
"They say it was another candidate. Someone with forbidden magic."
"They say—"
I stopped listening. The truth was worse than any rumor, but the rumors served a purpose: they obscured the real threat. By the time anyone figured out what had actually happened, the collector's employer would be long gone or too well-hidden to find.
Vance found me on the third evening, sitting alone in a corner of the candidate mess hall.
"Party meeting," he said. "Mira found something."
We gathered in an empty storage room near the barracks—Vance, Mira, Dorn (arm in a sling but otherwise intact), Elara (still pale, but steadier), and me.
Mira waited until the door was sealed before speaking.
"The collector. I traced his gear. The leather, the blade, the poison." She held up a small, dark fragment. "This was in the wound on Dorn's arm. A sliver of the blade. I had it analyzed."
"And?" Vance leaned forward.
"It's not from this continent. The metal is forged with techniques from the Dark Forest's edge. The poison is derived from plants that only grow in corrupted soil." Her flat voice held an edge now. "Someone is bringing weapons from the blighted lands into the Academy. Someone with resources. Someone with connections."
The Dark Forest. The sealed prison of the Demon Lord. The source of everything the Five were meant to fight.
"Who?" I asked.
Mira shook her head. "Not yet. But I will find out."
The room fell silent.
Elara spoke, her voice small but clear. "Why are we the ones doing this? Shouldn't we tell the proctors? Let them handle it?"
"Because the proctors are part of the problem," Vance said bitterly. "They're covering it up. That means either they're incompetent, or they're involved. Either way, we can't trust them."
Dorn scratched his head with his good hand. "So we're... what? Detectives now?"
"We're survivors," I said. Everyone looked at me. "The collector targeted us. He called me out specifically. Said his employer would pay for someone who could talk to plants." I met their eyes one by one. "Whoever sent him knows something about me. About what I can do. That means they're watching. And if they're watching me, they're probably watching all of us."
Mira nodded slowly. "We're marked."
"Yes."
Another silence, heavier than the first.
Then Vance laughed—a short, sharp sound. "Wonderful. Just wonderful. I came to the Academy to make my family proud, and instead I'm in a conspiracy with a plant mage, a mute assassin, a giant with one arm, and a cleric who faints at the sight of blood." He shook his head. "My father is going to love this."
Despite everything, I felt the corner of my mouth twitch.
"You're not wrong," I admitted.
Dorn grinned. "Best party ever."
Elara actually smiled. Mira's expression didn't change, but something in her eyes softened.
We were still misfits. Still broken, scared, and out of our depth.
But we were together.
And for the first time since arriving at the Academy, I didn't feel alone.
---