Between the satellite campus gate and the academy’s east block, Alexis launched an unsolicited critique of the pain au chocolat.

"It had promise," she said. "The lamination was sound. The chocolate, however, was applied with the recklessness of a craftsman who no longer fears judgment from his peers."

"It was fine," Alina said.

"Fine is the eulogy of the mediocre."

"I wish I could have tasted the pastry I paid for," Ash interjected.

When they returned to the main academy, it was already in its mid-morning rhythm. Students scattered in areas they called their own over time, a maintenance crew moving equipment along the east service road, and the general noise of an institution that had spent the last three days pretending it wasn’t in the middle of a tournament.

The overhead intercom crackled before a voice was heard.

"Attention all preliminary students. Phase Three commences at fourteen hundred hours. Report to the east arena complex by thirteen hundred hours for briefing and equipment assignment."

Around them, students who had been moving with the low energy of a day between phases stopped and reset. Phones were immediately pulled out to text and call one another. Students who were still in the tournament changed their posture immediately and looked the other way at students they weren’t allied with.

Ash ran a Shade sweep.

Sheila was at the edge of his range, the east wing. The peripheral-wrongness pattern was still there, but the architecture underneath it had changed since the morning. It was compressing. The seal had been running too long on too little. He recognized it from the island. It was what he felt when the creatures’ restoration drive had been building toward a target. Structure approaching failure from the inside.

"About how long do we have until Phase Three?" Ash asked.

"Three to four hours. Why?" Alina responded.

Ash hadn’t answered or moved. Alina and Alexis stopped to turn and look at him.

"I don’t know if she’ll last that long."

"Wherever she is, we’ll take position nearby and look like we belong there." She glanced at Alexis. "You’re with me."

"Thou requirest me as cover," Alexis said. "I accept this role despite not auditioning for it."

"Don’t make it obvious."

"I am never obvious."

Alina turned to Ash. "Take the front approach, being visible. Do nothing that triggers the alarm until you’re close enough to act."

They split at the east block entrance.

The first corridor ran past the east stairwell junction, which was wider than the hallways that fed into it. Four corridors converging at a single point, the intersection ringed with trophy cases running the length of the west wall.

Glass-fronted and lit from inside. Framed photographs of past tournament winners, plaques for Gate event records, and names and class years going back further than anyone currently enrolled. Several of the frames had entries scored through in red marker, a new name written beneath in a different hand.

Three students occupied the bench directly below the cases. They wore regular non-academy uniforms that most people eagerly awaited wearing when classes weren’t in session. One had a bandaged forearm resting across both knees. One was asleep, sitting upright, chin dropped to chest. The third was eating from a foil packet that looked like he hadn’t eaten any food in the last thirty-six hours.

When they approached the junction, they saw him.

Davos, standing with one teammate, mid-conversation, completely ordinary. When Ash came around the corner, Davos’s eyes found him and held without any adjustment to his posture.

"We’re taking the maintenance corridor," Ash said. He turned before either Alina or Alexis could speak.

The maintenance path ran parallel behind the east block utility rooms. Bare concrete walls, exposed ducting at irregular heights, and strip lighting that made skin look gray and hands look bloodless. A service cart sat parked against the far wall with a broken chair balanced on top of it, a handwritten tag tied to the leg that read FACILITIES. The floor was slick at the center where a drain had never been properly sealed.

Ash ducked under a rusted pipe that crossed the corridor at shoulder height, the clearance close enough that the metal grazed his jacket. Midway through, the smell of solvent gave way to the heavy reek of stagnant blackwater and oxidized copper.

He ran a Shade sweep. The concrete pressed in on the signal: reduced range, compressed returns, the architecture of the corridor working against him the same way a basement worked against a broadcast. Sheila’s signal was there. Narrower than before.

They came back out into the main hallway.

Davos was at the east wing entrance.

The corridor outside the common area had filled since the intercom. Students moving like they finally understood the deadline they were working with.

And yet. When they made their way, he was already waiting for them.

Davos had two teammates now, one positioned on each side of him. He wasn’t standing in the doorway of where they needed to get. He was standing in front of it with his arms loose.

"Where are you three going in such a hurry?" he said. "The next phase doesn’t start for another few hours."

Alina stepped forward without looking back at Ash or Alexis. "We’re going through. Now. You can move, or I’ll move through you."

She didn’t stop. She accelerated. Davos held his ground for two steps, then three. He flinched at the last moment, a split-second shift that he covered immediately by looking like he’d chosen it.

Alexis followed without acknowledgment.

Ash went last. When his shoulder came level with Davos’s, Davos moved into him with a shoulder check that tested Ash’s footing. Ash caught his balance without breaking stride. "Whatever you’re about to do, I’ll find out what it is."

Ash didn’t answer. He jogged to catch up with Alina and Alexis.

The east wing common area ran along a bank of windows facing the north garden. The room was well-occupied with students running light drills in the open center space, others checking notes at the long tables. Against the far wall, two students in tournament medical armbands talked quietly over cold cups of coffee.

Sheila was near the far window with a phone face-up on the table. She was scrolling through it with one thumb, but her expression looked like she didn’t care about what was actually being shown to her.

"Are you certain about what’s happening to her?" Alina asked.

"Neither of you knew what was happening inside of you," he said. "She has less than an hour until—"

None of them finished it.

Alina’s expression stayed level. Alexis went very still.

Alina crossed to an adjacent table and sat down. She pulled her phone out like she had somewhere else to be.

Alexis took a breath.

Then she stood up.

"People of the realm, hear me!" she announced.

The drills stopped. The note-reviewing stopped. Someone’s chair scraped and then didn’t move again. She was standing in the open space between the center tables, one arm raised, chin up.

"I, who was denied my birthright. The one who walked through the valley of a hundred discouragements and found myself still walking. I stand before you now, unchanged in purpose, unbowed in conviction, carrying still the fire that was placed inside me by those who knew what I was before I knew it myself!"

A student at the nearest table turned in her chair. Across the room, two of Sheila’s teammates exchanged a look.

"The iron gate was sealed! The guards were many! They said to me: you are too small, you are too late, the hour of choosing has already passed—" Alexis stopped, her gaze fixed somewhere past the middle distance. "And I said to them: the hour of choosing is whenever I choose it to be."

The second of Sheila’s teammates had turned fully. Sheila glanced up from the table.

Alina caught Ash’s eye and nodded once.

Alexis was already building to the next stanza, gesturing at the ceiling.

The fight-or-flight fired. His nervous system didn’t have a setting for prepared. The alarm registered the architecture and fired through his body. His legs wanted the two steps backward that had always been available to him.

He and the void moved at the same time. The hunger oriented with Ash stepping forward, neither of them led the other.

His vision tunneled on the path between him and the far window. His knees wanted to lock on the first step. He overrode them. On the second step his ears rang and felt like they were about to bleed. His body treated the approach like a ledge it refused to walk toward. Each step felt like he was pressing through invisible water. His lungs pulled short and shallow.

The three steps to Sheila’s table felt like more. But then, he was just an arm’s length away. He supported the grabbing arm with the other, barely locking onto Sheila’s arm.

The void followed through on its end. It reached through the contact, seizing the Shade before it could run away itself.

And the Shade’s realm opened.