The assessment continued.
Kellan had barely settled back into his seat before the silver-robed official called the next candidate.
"Candidate One Hundred and Sixty-Five."
A young man stepped onto the platform. The conversations throughout the hall faded as he entered the formation. Azure light swallowed his figure, and the battlefield changed.
A ruined fortress appeared. Broken walls surrounded the candidate, while several armored beasts emerged from the rubble. The battle began immediately.
Unlike Kellan's trial, there was no hesitation. The candidate charged the nearest beast, exchanging blows with it while the others circled.
Zion watched quietly. "He'll fail."
"That fast?" Kellan glanced at him.
"He's watching the strongest one."
The candidate had already committed himself to the largest beast, while two smaller creatures moved in behind him unnoticed.
Mira caught it too. "He's being surrounded."
He realized it a moment too late, turning just as one creature struck from behind while another hit his side.
The formation flashed.
"Candidate One Hundred and Sixty-Five has failed the first stage."
The battlefield disappeared.
Kellan clicked his tongue. "That was quick."
"He focused too much on the opponent in front of him," Zion said.
Another candidate was called. Then another. The trials continued one after another. Some candidates overwhelmed their opponents through raw strength. Others relied on speed, technique, or clever use of the battlefield. A few entered with confidence only to discover that their confidence had been built on fighting opponents weaker than themselves.
The hall slowly changed as the numbers increased. The excitement that had filled the room earlier was gone. Nobody knew what their trial would contain. Nobody knew whether their strengths would be enough. And nobody wanted to become another empty seat.
Kellan watched another candidate finish his trial before leaning back. "How many more?"
"One hundred and seventy," the official called.
Kellan sighed. "Apparently a lot."
Mira smiled faintly. "You knew there were three hundred and fifty-two candidates."
"I was hoping the number would somehow become smaller."
"It is becoming smaller."
"Not quickly enough."
Zion shook his head. "You've been complaining about food and the number of candidates since your trial."
"I'm consistent."
Mira laughed quietly.
Then the official spoke again. "Candidate One Hundred and Seventy-One."
A few candidates shifted in their seats, and something in Mira's expression tightened just slightly.
"So you're nervous," Zion said, catching it.
"I'm not."
Kellan immediately pointed at her. "She is."
"I'm not."
"You just straightened your back."
"I always sit like this."
"You also stopped smiling."
Mira glanced at him. "Do you want me to hit you?"
"There she is," Kellan grinned.
Zion almost smiled.
The official called again. "Candidate One Hundred and Seventy-Two."
Mira's eyes stayed on the formation as the numbers crept closer.
Kellan leaned toward her. "Don't worry."
"You nearly died in yours."
"I said don't worry. I didn't say I was a good example."
She laughed. That helped, at least a little.
A few more candidates went. One failed. Two passed. Another failed. Then the hall quieted.
The silver-robed official lifted his list. "Candidate One Hundred and Seventy-Five."
Mira stood.
Kellan's smile disappeared, and Zion looked over at her without a word. For a moment none of them spoke, the silence stretching just long enough to feel deliberate while Mira adjusted the weapon at her side — a slender spear, slightly shorter than the one used by the candidate earlier, with a narrow silver blade at its tip.
"You're using that?" Kellan asked.
"You didn't notice?"
"I noticed."
"You've been sitting beside me for hours."
"I've been distracted."
"By food."
"Mostly."
Mira shook her head and looked to Zion instead. He gave her a small nod. "Good luck."
"I won't need it," she said, smiling.
"That's confidence," Kellan said, raising an eyebrow.
"No." She stepped toward the platform. "It's preparation."
She walked away before he could answer.
Kellan watched her go, then leaned closer to Zion. "She really is nervous."
"Yes."
"But she's hiding it."
"Very well."
Mira reached the platform, and the hall quieted as she stepped into the formation. Azure light engulfed her.
---
Mira opened her eyes.
She was standing in a vast stone courtyard. Tall walls surrounded her on every side, their surfaces covered in cracks and old battle scars. Several broken pillars stood throughout the courtyard, providing the only cover.
She slowly turned. No opponent. No movement. Only the wind moving dust between the stones.
She tightened her grip on the spear. "This again?"
A low growl answered from somewhere near the western wall. Mira didn't turn toward it immediately — she let her eyes drift there instead, unhurried, and caught the faint shift of something ducking behind a pillar.
She didn't attack. She waited, lowering her center of gravity, counting the pillars and the angles they offered. One. Two. Three. Four.
A shadow flickered across the wall to her left. She didn't take the bait. A moment later something else moved — closer this time, near enough that she felt it before she heard it. She thrust backward without turning.
*Clang.*
Her spear struck something hard. She spun to find a creature standing several meters away — roughly human-sized, its body armored in dark, overlapping plates, four thin limbs each ending in a curved claw. Its head was narrow. Its eyes were entirely white.
Mira's expression stayed calm. "So that's the trick."
The creature crouched, and then simply wasn't there anymore. She stepped sideways on instinct, and a claw sliced through the space where her neck had been a half second earlier. She rotated the spear in the same motion and caught its side on the way past — dark blood spilling across the stone before it vanished again.
She didn't chase it. That was the trap. Instead she stood still and let the courtyard tell her where it was: the drag of a claw against grit, a held breath that wasn't hers. When it dropped from directly above her, she was already turning the spear upward to meet it, the blade catching it through the abdomen. It twisted around the shaft to close the distance anyway, using its own momentum, claw already swinging for her face. Mira released one hand and ducked under it, then drove a kick into its chest that sent it skidding several meters away.
She pulled the spear free. Blood dripped from the tip.
Outside the formation, Kellan leaned forward. "She's not chasing it."
"She knows it wants her to," Zion said.
Darius watched the formation carefully. "That creature relies on surprise attacks."
"And she's refusing to give it predictable movement," Zion said.
Inside the formation, Mira tracked the creature's path around the courtyard — not its body, which kept disappearing, but its shadow, which couldn't. A slight movement flickered behind one of the pillars. She thrust without hesitation. The spear punched clean through the stone.
The creature leapt clear at the last instant.
Mira smiled. "Found you."
It snarled and charged. She met it head-on this time — spear flashing, the creature dodging, her weapon rotating so the butt cracked against its ribs. It staggered. She pressed the advantage: a thrust it barely twisted away from, another it blocked, a third that forced it back a full step. She advanced. It kept giving ground, one step at a time, until it suddenly smiled.
Mira's eyes narrowed. The creature vanished, and the courtyard went quiet in a way that didn't sit right.
Then she noticed the blood — not on her spear, but scattered across the ground in places that didn't line up with the fight she'd just had. Too many drops. Too many places.
"Not one," she said quietly.
The courtyard trembled. Shadows shifted beneath the broken pillars, and one by one, four more creatures emerged to join the first. Mira turned slowly, counting. Five identical bodies. Five sets of white, unblinking eyes.
Kellan's expression dropped. "That's not fair."
Darius shook his head. "Look closer. Five bodies don't mean five separate opponents."
"That doesn't make it better."
Zion said nothing. His eyes stayed on Mira.
They attacked together. Mira's spear became a blur of motion — the first creature thrown backward, but the second slipped past her guard and a claw tore across her side. She gritted her teeth and kept moving, ducking under the third to sweep its legs, twisting away from a fourth that still caught her shoulder before she could clear it. Blood spilled. She stumbled, and they closed around her again.
Mira forced her breathing to slow. In. Out. In.
Five creatures. Five identical stances. And something about it didn't sit right — she'd fought the original long enough to know its rhythm, its impatience, the way it favored feints before committing. These didn't feint. These moved like a single mind wearing five bodies, every strike arriving with the same weight, the same timing, down to the fraction of a second.
"They're connected," she murmured.
One lunged. She blocked. A second came a heartbeat later — she blocked that too, then jumped as a third swept low, claws passing beneath her boots. She landed, and for a strange moment, all five simply stopped.
She studied them. Not five fighters. One fighter, wearing five shapes.
Her eyes moved from the creatures to the pillars, to the shadows, to the blood scattered across the stone. All of it connected. The advantage here had never been speed.
It was synchronization.
Mira lowered her spear as the realization settled, and the creatures charged the instant she did — all five moving as one. She didn't meet them.
She ran.
"She's retreating?" Kellan stared, half out of his seat.
Zion shook his head, eyes fixed on the formation. "Watch."
She sprinted for the nearest pillar with all five in pursuit, and at the last possible moment cut sharply around it. They followed as one — all five committed to the same turn, the same angle. Mira drove her spear into the ground. A crack split through the courtyard floor, and the creatures leapt to clear it, passing directly overhead as she rolled beneath them.
For one instant, all five were aligned in the air.
She rose and swept the spear in a single wide arc. It caught the nearest creature across the side — and all five staggered at once, wounds opening across each of their bodies in the exact same place, as though a single strike had been divided evenly among them.
Her eyes widened. "There."
She understood now. The damage wasn't just affecting the others — it was being shared between them, split across all five bodies no matter which one she actually hit. Their perfect coordination meant a wound anywhere became a wound everywhere. That was the price of moving as one.
She stopped trying to fight five separate enemies and simply attacked the same one, again and again, faster each time — and every strike rippled through the group, each body absorbing a fraction of what should have belonged to just one. When they tried to encircle her, she refused to let it happen, forcing each one back toward the others until the courtyard itself became a cage they'd built for themselves.
The nearest lunged. She sidestepped and drove the spear through its shoulder. The other four screamed in unison, the wound flickering faintly across all their bodies at once. She twisted the blade free and it collapsed — and the others staggered, thrown off by the sudden absence.
Their synchronization was breaking. One moved a beat too early. Another hesitated a beat too late. Mira caught the gap and stepped into it, spear finding the second, then the third, then the fourth — each one falling in a burst of scattering light until only one remained.
She stood several meters away, breathing hard. Her shoulder still bled. Her side ached. Her grip didn't waver.
The last creature crouched, claws dark with old blood, and charged.
Mira didn't move. She let it come — closer, closer — and at the final instant stepped aside and turned with it in one smooth motion, the spear already moving. The blade found its chest.
It froze. Their eyes met for half a second. Then it shattered into light.
The courtyard disappeared.
Mira stood alone inside the formation, breathing slowly. Then warm energy swept through her, closing the wound at her side, sealing the cut on her shoulder, carrying the pain and exhaustion away with it. She touched her shoulder. Nothing there.
A small smile. "Convenient."
The formation released her. She stepped onto the platform to applause.
Kellan was already standing. "That was insane!"
"You were worried?"
"No." She raised an eyebrow. He corrected himself immediately. "Maybe a little."
Zion approached. "You understood the connection."
"They were sharing information through their movements."
"And splitting the damage between them."
"Exactly. Hit one, and all five felt a piece of it. That's why they moved like a single body — they had to, or the cost would've fallen unevenly."
Darius finally spoke. "You didn't defeat them by overpowering them. You broke their coordination."
Mira looked at him. Darius nodded once. "Good."
It was only one word. But Mira smiled.
The silver-robed official raised his voice. "Candidate One Hundred and Seventy-Five has completed the first stage."
Mira returned to her seat. Kellan leaned toward her immediately.
"You said you didn't need luck," Kellan said, dropping into the seat beside her.
"I didn't."
"You almost got stabbed."
"I didn't," Mira said, then reconsidered at his look. "Fine — I got scratched."
"It was bleeding."
"It healed," she said simply, as if that erased the point entirely.
Zion shook his head. "You two are going to be exhausting."
"You're only realizing that now?"
Mira laughed, and the three settled back into their seats.
But Zion's eyes remained on the formation. Mira had passed. Kellan had passed. He had passed. Yet hundreds of candidates still remained.
The first stage wasn't over. Not even close.
The silver-robed official called the next number.
"Candidate One Hundred and Seventy-Six."
Another candidate stood. The hall fell quiet once again.
The assessment continued.