Three days of repairs.
Three days of healing broken bones, mending shattered decks, and trying to forget the screams.
The ship limped through the sky, slower than before, but functional.
Ethan spent most of that time in his room.
Not sleeping.
Thinking.
The beacon is gone.
In Victor's hands.
A wizard old enough to remember when Earth's medieval period was still happening.
How do I steal from someone like that?
He had no answer.
Only the desperate knowledge that he had to find one.
On the morning of the fourth day, Roma's voice echoed through the ship's corridors.
"All students to the deck! We're approaching the Academy!"
Students.
Not "children."
Not "candidates."
Students.
The Trial was over.
Those who survived had earned their place.
Ethan climbed to the deck with the others.
Yama fell into step beside him, his ribs still bandaged but healing faster than normal.
"You ready for this?" Yama asked.
"No."
"Good. Neither am I."
They emerged into morning light.
The ship descended toward land.
Not slowly. Not gently.
Dropping like a stone until the last moment, when Roma's magic arrested their fall and set them down with a jarring thud on a beach of black sand.
Ethan stumbled, caught himself on the railing.
Through the morning mist, he could see their destination.
Jungle.
Dense, primordial, utterly alien.
Trees that looked wrong—trunks that spiraled instead of growing straight, leaves that shimmered with colors that had no names, vines that seemed to writhe even in still air.
[ANALYZING VEGETATION... BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION: UNKNOWN. DETECTING TRACE MAGICAL ENERGY SIGNATURES FROM PLANT LIFE. ASSESSMENT: POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENT.]
Everything on this planet is potentially hazardous.
"Everyone OFF!" Roma called cheerfully. "Come on, little kittens! Don't dawdle!"
The children descended the gangplank in nervous clusters.
Fifty-two traumatized survivors stepping onto black sand that crunched like broken glass underfoot.
Diana led the way, her posture straight despite the bandages visible beneath her clothes.
The Prince stayed close to his sister.
Glan complained about the sand getting in his boots.
Nira held tight to an older girl's hand, her small face pale.
The mist was thick.
It rolled across the beach in waves, obscuring the jungle's edge.
And then—
A sound.
Not loud.
Quiet, almost.
Breathing.
Deep. Slow. Rhythmic.
The breathing of something vast.
[ALERT: DETECTING MASSIVE BIOLOGICAL ENTITY. DISTANCE: APPROXIMATELY 200 METERS. SIZE: UNABLE TO CALCULATE—EXCEEDS SENSOR RANGE.]
The mist parted.
And Ethan's blood turned to ice.
It was sleeping.
Curled in the space between beach and jungle like a mountain that had decided to take a nap.
A hound.
But calling it a "hound" was like calling the ocean "damp."
It was the size of a mountain.
Literally.
Its body—curled in rest—was easily three hundred meters long. Its shoulder, even lying down, rose fifty meters into the air.
Its fur was black as midnight, each strand thick as a ship's rope, moving slightly with each massive breath.
And it had five heads.
Five.
Each head was the size of a building, resting on necks as thick as ancient tree trunks. They were arranged in a semicircle, all facing outward, all with eyes closed in sleep.
Each head had different features—one with horns, one with elongated fangs, one with what looked like bone plating across its skull.
But all shared the same fundamental wrongness.
This wasn't a natural creature.
This was something made.
[BIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS: IMPOSSIBLE. ENTITY DEFIES ALL KNOWN PHYSICAL AND BIOLOGICAL LAWS. MASS ESTIMATES SUGGEST IT SHOULD COLLAPSE UNDER ITS OWN WEIGHT. ENERGY SIGNATURE: EXTREME MAGICAL SATURATION.]
Someone behind Ethan whimpered.
"That's... that's..."
"The Guardian of the Academy," Roma said cheerfully, walking past them toward the sleeping mountain-hound. "Beautiful, isn't he?"
She kept walking.
Directly toward it.
"Come along! We don't have all day!"
No one moved.
"Is she insane?!" someone hissed.
"We can't go near that thing!"
"It'll wake up! It'll—"
Roma turned, hands on her hips.
"Oh, he'll definitely wake up. That's the point. Now MOVE, or I'll have him come fetch you!"
She smiled her usual cheerful smile.
Somehow, that made it worse.
Diana was the first to follow.
Of course she was.
Royalty couldn't show fear.
She walked forward with her head high, though Ethan noticed her hand hovering near where her blade would manifest.
The Prince followed.
Then others, in ones and twos.
Ethan looked at Yama.
"We're really doing this."
"Apparently."
"I hate this planet."
"It's growing on me," Yama said. Then paused. "Actually, no. I hate it too."
They walked forward together.
The closer they got, the more impossible the Guardian became.
Each paw—relaxed in sleep—was larger than Roma's ship.
Its claws were the size of tree trunks.
The rise and fall of its breathing created wind that stirred the mist.
And the smell—not unpleasant, exactly. Just... wrong. Like ozone and copper and something else Ethan had no reference for.
[ATMOSPHERIC ANALYSIS: DETECTING UNKNOWN CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS. POSSIBLY BYPRODUCTS OF MAGICAL METABOLISM.]
They reached the Guardian.
Stood in a small cluster before the mountain of black fur and breathing muscle.
Roma walked right up to one of the heads—the center one, with bone plating—and patted it affectionately.
Her hand barely covered a single scale of bone.
"Good boy," she cooed. "Who's a good boy? You are! Yes you are!"
"She's definitely insane," Glan muttered.
The Guardian's eyes opened.
All ten of them.
Simultaneously.
They glowed.
Not with reflected light.
With inner radiance.
Each eye burned with a different color—crimson, gold, emerald, sapphire, violet, silver, orange, white, black, and something Ethan's brain couldn't process.
Ten massive eyes, each larger than a wagon, focused on the gathered children.
[WARNING: EXTREME ENERGY SPIKE DETECTED. UNKNOWN EFFECT IMMINENT. RECOMMEND—]
The Guardian's center head moved.
Slowly.
Ponderously.
Rising on a neck thick as a fortress tower.
It looked down at them.
Fifty-two children who suddenly felt very, very small.
Its jaws opened.
Ethan had faced the Frost Wolf Alpha.
He had survived the Festival of Heroes.
He had watched Nori break through walls with a gesture.
None of it prepared him for this.
The Guardian's mouth was a cavern.
Teeth the size of buildings.
A throat that descended into darkness deeper than any cave.
And breath—hot, carrying that same impossible scent—that washed over them like a physical force.
It moved.
Fast.
Impossibly fast for something so large.
The head descended like a falling building.
Screaming.
Everywhere.
Children scattered in every direction.
Running. Fleeing. Desperate and hopeless.
Some tried to fight—Diana's blade of light flashed into existence, Yama drew his sword, others raised whatever weapons they had.
Pointless.
Like trying to fight a mountain.
Roma stood perfectly still, smiling.
The Guardian's jaws closed around the entire group.
Darkness.
Complete. Absolute.
And then—
Swallowing.
Ethan felt himself lifted off his feet.
Not by teeth—there was no pain, no crushing pressure.
Just... movement.
Being drawn backward, downward, into the throat of something that shouldn't exist.
He tried to scream but had no air.
Tried to fight but had nothing to fight against.
Just darkness and motion and the overwhelming certainty that he was about to die.
Maya.
I'm sorry.
I tried.
I'm so sorry.
The movement stopped.
Light.
Sudden. Blinding.
Ethan gasped, his lungs filling with air that shouldn't exist.
He was standing.
Not falling.
Not crushed.
Standing.
On solid ground.
[ALERT CANCELLED. HOST VITALS STABLE. LOCATION: UNKNOWN. ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION: BREATHABLE. GRAVITY: NORMAL TERA STANDARD.]
Ethan's eyes adjusted.
He was in a hall.
A massive hall.
The ceiling soared overhead—easily thirty meters high, held up by pillars carved from single pieces of crystal that pulsed with soft light.
The floor was polished stone, inlaid with patterns that seemed to shift when viewed from different angles.
The walls were lined with banners—hundreds of them, each bearing different symbols, different colors.
And the hall was filled with people.
Not just the fifty-two from their ship.
Hundreds of children.
Maybe over a thousand.
All roughly the same age range—ten to sixteen years old.
All looking just as confused and terrified as Ethan felt.
Yama appeared beside him, his silver eyes wide.
"We're... alive?"
"Apparently."
"Where are we?"
"I have no idea."
[ATTEMPTING ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS... DETECTING SPATIAL ANOMALIES. HYPOTHESIS: LOCATION MAY BE DIMENSIONALLY DISPLACED. CURRENT COORDINATES DO NOT MATCH EXPECTED GEOGRAPHIC POSITION.]
We're inside the Guardian.
Or we went through it into somewhere else.
Or magic just doesn't care about my understanding of physics anymore.
Diana was gathering their group, doing a headcount.
"Everyone here? Anyone injured?"
Nira was crying but unharmed.
Glan looked annoyed. "I would like to formally protest this method of transportation."
"Noted," Diana said dryly. "Anyone else want to complain about being alive?"
No one did.
Roma appeared at the front of the hall.
Not walking there.
Just... there.
One moment absent, the next standing on a raised platform that Ethan was certain hadn't existed seconds before.
Her cheerful smile was firmly in place.
"Welcome, little kittens!" Her voice carried to every corner of the enormous space. "Welcome to the Testing Hall of Sector 51!"
Roma's expression grew slightly more serious.
"This sector—and the Academy within it—is ruled by the Great Wizard. You won't see him. No one has. Some say he's fighting in another world, conquering it for the glory of Tera."
Ethan's blood ran cold.
Another world.
Conquering it.
That's what they do.
That's what they'll do to Earth if they figure out the beacon.
"But while the Great Wizard rules from afar," Roma continued, "the Academy is managed by three schools. Each school has its own focus, its own methods, its own headmaster."
She gestured, and three banners descended from the ceiling.
Each massive. Each distinct.
The first banner was deep purple, marked with intricate runic patterns that seemed to writhe across the fabric.
"The School of Runes," Roma said, and her voice carried pride. "My school. We study the ancient language of creation itself. We learn to read the patterns that underlie reality. We use other creatures—their essence, their knowledge—as sources of power."
She smiled.
"Our headmaster is Dean Victor."
Of course he is.
Of course the man with my beacon runs the school that studies 'the language of creation.'
Of course.
The second banner was silver and gold, marked with symbols that hurt to look at directly—spirals and fractals and shapes that Ethan's mind kept sliding off of.
"The School of All," Roma said, and her tone shifted to something that might have been respect or might have been fear. "They study subjects most would call impossible. Luck. Fate. Probability. Causality. Time. Concepts that have no business being studied."
She paused.
"They are very, very dangerous. Their headmaster is Dean Randoll."
The third banner was bright red, orange, and blue—flames and waves rendered in cloth.
"The School of Elements," Roma said. "They study the fundamental forces. Fire. Water. Earth. Air. Lightning. Ice. Raw power channeled through will and understanding."
"Their headmaster is Dean Sorek."
Roma looked across the assembled children.
"All three headmasters are powerful beyond your comprehension. All three serve the Great Wizard. And all three will determine your futures."
She clapped her hands together.
"Now! The fun part! We're going to discover which school you belong to—and what your elemental affinity is!"
Ethan barely heard her.
His mind was racing.
Three schools.
Victor runs the School of Runes.
Which means the beacon is probably somewhere in that school's territory.
I need to be placed there.
I need access to Victor's domain.
But how do I ensure I'm assigned to that school?
[INSUFFICIENT DATA ON ASSIGNMENT METHODOLOGY. RECOMMEND OBSERVATION AND ADAPTATION.]
"Line up!" Roma called. "Everyone! Single file! We'll test you one by one!"
The hall erupted into controlled chaos as a thousand children tried to form lines.
Ethan found himself swept along with his group.
Yama stayed close.
"Any idea what they're testing for?" Yama whispered.
"None whatsoever."
"Think the nanobots will cause problems?"
Ethan's hand went to the pendant hidden under his shirt.
Yama's grandmother's necklace.
The one that masked his otherworldly energy.
"I hope not."
At the front of the hall, three doorways had appeared.
Each marked with the symbol of a different school.
Children were being directed through them, one by one.
Whatever waited beyond...
That would determine Ethan's path forward.
His access to Victor.
His chance to steal back the beacon.
His only hope of saving Earth.
No pressure.
The line moved forward.
And Ethan prepared to lie his way into the heart of enemy territory.