The fever had not broken.
Kael knew it before he opened his eyes. He knew it from the heat clinging to his clothes, from the way his head felt too heavy against the pillow, from that dry taste in his mouth that wouldn't disappear even when he swallowed. He lay still for a moment, staring at the plank ceiling, waiting for his body to decide to cooperate.
It did not cooperate.
"Get up. We have to go."
It was Darik's voice. Kael turned his head. The four of them were already standing, changed, with their boots on. Alesandra was watching him with a slight frown. Marcus was not looking at him.
"Yes. I'm coming."
He sat up slowly. The room spun for a second and then settled. He put on his clothes with the clumsy movements of someone who hasn't quite convinced his body that this is necessary. He looked for something to fix himself up with, a mirror, water, anything, but there was none of that. Only the stone walls and the narrow window with the gray morning light entering without permission.
'What must my face look like.'
It didn't matter. If they had to do the same thing as yesterday, appearance was the least of his problems.
When he looked up, Eryndra had already left.
The field was cold and filled with recruits formed in irregular lines.
The instructor walked in front of them without haste, his hands behind his back, looking at their faces one by one as if searching for something he hadn't yet found.
He stopped.
"Today is different." His voice was clear and effortless. "Each of you will take a weapon." He gestured toward the tables set up on one side. "There are no second choices. Choose well."
Kael heard the first part.
The second part arrived a little later, with that annoying delay everything had when the fever had been settled for hours. Choose well. Well. Defining 'well' required knowing what for, and for that he needed to hear what came next, but the instructor had already pointed at the tables and the recruits had begun to move, and Kael was still processing 'choose'.
He rubbed his eyes. He focused.
The tables. The tables first.
On them were rows of weapons. Swords of different sizes, spears, bows with their quivers, daggers, short-handled hammers. Kael scanned them with his eyes as the recruits began to move.
Most went straight for the swords.
Which made sense. The sword was the most common weapon, the most studied, the one almost everyone had seen used at some point, even from afar. Kael watched as the first ones picked them up with the assurance of someone grasping something familiar. Some weighed it for a moment, twisted their wrist, and nodded. Others simply took it without thinking, as if they had made that decision before coming to the field.
A tall boy grabbed a spear and held it with a posture that suggested he knew exactly what he had in his hands. Another went for a hammer, lifted it, frowned, put it back, and took a sword. A girl chose a dagger without hesitation, hid it in her belt with a swift movement, and moved away from the table before anyone could comment.
'We Drayvar use the spear as a symbol, and everyone here goes for the sword. It must be for the same reason. The ease.'
He looked back at the tables.
The problem was that he didn't know what the test was. And without knowing the test, choosing well was basically guessing. If they had to fight each other, the sword was the most reasonable choice, but with the fever, his right arm wouldn't hold the sustained weight. The spear required coordination he currently lacked. The dagger was too short for anything that wasn't dangerously close. The hammer was slow and heavy.
'What would be the best option? I don't know. I don't have enough information.'
He looked around. Almost everyone had already chosen. The tables were emptying.
'Damn it.'
He reached out his hand towards the table without fully deciding, and his fingers found the bow.
He held it for a moment.
He had never used a bow. He knew they existed, he had seen the archers of Varen's contingent in formation, but that was it. He had no practice, no technique, and with his arms still weak from the fever, the string would be difficult to draw.
'Too bad.'
There were no other options on the table. He slung the quiver over his shoulder.
"Everyone has chosen their weapons."
The instructor scanned them once more. Then he pointed toward the forest that began north of the field, a line of tall, dense trees that from here looked simply dark.
"The Pumareth lives in there."
He paused.
Kael tried to concentrate. The name meant nothing to him, but the instructor's tone did. It was the same tone he had used to announce the rule from the day before, the one he used for things that didn't need drama because the facts alone were enough.
The instructor began to describe the animal. Kael heard the first words—predator, mountains, thick fur—and then the fever played a trick on him, and the next segment came blended: claws, leaps, prey, without him being able to fully organize it. He blinked. He strained.
The Pumareth was a predator of the wild mountains. Its body was long and agile, covered by thick fur in golden and brown tones that made it disappear among the rock and the shadow of the trees. Its muscles moved beneath the skin with a silent strength, wasting not a single gesture. Its hind legs were the most dangerous: they could propel it in long, quick leaps from a deceiving distance, and its curved claws ripped with the same ease that other animals simply push.
It was not the type of animal that attacked because it was hungry.
It was the type of animal that attacked because it could.
Kael processed that with a one-second delay.
'Wait.'
"Your mission is to hunt one." The instructor spoke without changing his tone. "Bring me any part of its body, and you pass." A brief pause. "If you bring nothing, you are disqualified. If you try to flee..." he left the phrase there, looking at the forest, "we'll hunt you down just like them."
No one said anything.
Kael looked at the bow in his hand.
Then he looked at the forest.
Then the bow.
'No. No, no, no.'
"Run."
The recruits began to move toward the forest. Some alone, others forming quick groups with those next to them. Kael watched them for a second before walking.
Going alone was suicide. That was the first and clearest thing. The Pumareth was not the type of prey a recruit with a fever and a bow he didn't know how to use could hunt without help. Groups had more possibilities, more eyes, more options if something went wrong.
He turned, looking for Darik.
He wasn't there.
He looked for Marcus, Alesandra, Eryndra.
Not them either.
In the general movement of bodies entering the forest, the group had dissolved without anyone noticing. It wasn't intentional, just the chaos of a hundred people moving at the same time toward the same place. But the result was the same.
'They abandoned me.'
He thought it and immediately dismissed it. It wasn't that. It was simply that everyone had followed the person closest to them, and he had lingered a second too long looking at the forest.
A second too long with a fever was enough to be left alone.
He looked around him. The last recruits were entering the trees. Some in groups of three or four. Others in two. A few alone, with the expression of someone who already calculated that no one wanted them and decided not to ask.
He had to join someone.
The problem was obvious: he was the smallest in the field. He had noticed it since the first day, but now, standing alone with a bow he didn't know how to use while the others disappeared into the trees, it was impossible not to notice. Any group that saw him approach would see the exact same thing: someone smaller than the rest, with a feverish face, holding a weapon he clearly hadn't chosen with conviction.
A hindrance. Or worse, bait.
Kael looked at the edge of the forest.
Then he looked at the groups still visible among the first trees.
The fever pulsed behind his eyes, and the bow weighed more than it should on his shoulder.
He had to choose.