They moved as a five-point spear through the Fire Zone—Aeros at the tip, the others fanned behind him, each step measured against the land's temper. Heat ripples wobbled the horizon; fissures coughed sparks; the ground underfoot sweated resinous lava like fevered pores.
"Banner should be near the central nexus," Aeros said, eyes narrowed. His Solar Radiance pulsed in a steady cadence, reading currents of heat the way sailors read wind. "But—remember what Elder Yin said. Banners must be from other zones to qualify."
Lenia fell in beside him, staff angled for a block. "So taking Fire's banner won't count for us."
"It still matters," Aeros said. "If we seize it, we stabilize the gate to the next zone. Safer passage."
Korra snorted. "Stabilize a gate, grab a banner, don't die. Easy."
"Stay light on the jokes," Toba muttered, checking the leather wraps on his guandao. The serpentine fox on his shoulders lifted its wedge head, ember eyes blinking, tongue tasting the glowing air. "Huo can soak some heat, not a volcano's worth."
Zhen jogged quietly at the rear, talismans tucked between his fingers like thin, paper knives. "I'll lay a path if the stone starts to melt."
They skirted a basin of bubble-slick lava, crossed a cracked ridge where the world shivered with subterranean pressure, then climbed into wind. The air tasted metallic here, as if the sun had left filings in it. When Aeros raised a hand, the team stopped in sync.
"Feel that?" he asked softly.
"Fire vein's about to erupt," Lenia said. She was already moving, moonsteel whirling. A pale dome settled over them as the ridge convulsed and spat a ridge-length gout of flame. The moonlight didn't quench the fire—but it bent it, sending the worst of the blast around them. Aeros laced his fingers, drew in breath, and pushed a thin pane of Solar Qi over the dome—sun and moon knitting into a twilight film. Heat roared past like a freighted river.
Korra let out a low whistle. "Okay, eclipse combo. Noted."
"Keep moving," Aeros said. He didn't sound bossy. Just set on the goal.
They dropped into the nexus valley—a caldera split into three terraces, each carved with jagged sigils that pulsed ember-red. At its heart stood a black stone dais ringed with three obsidian pylons. Above the dais, suspended in a whirl of shimmering heat, hung a banner: a strip of woven firelight, the Zone Standard of Flame, rippling without wind.
"Not ours," Lenia reminded, scanning. "But taking it should open a gate to another zone."
"Right," Aeros said. He pointed. "Those pylons are the lock. We disable all three, the shield drops, gate opens. Fast is better than fancy."
Korra rolled her shoulders, blades flashing. "Fast is what I do."
"Fast and together," Zhen said. "The pylons won't like being touched."
Toba squinted at the stone. "Pylons are feeding off the fire veins below. Break linkages, don't blast the core—or the whole caldera might go."
"Okay," Aeros said, already moving into roles. "Korra, slice the vent filaments on the north pylon when Lenia muffles the surge. Zhen, tether the west pylon's inscriptions—freeze their sequence. Toba, jam the south pylon's base when I overheat its capstone; Huo backs you up and drinks overflow. We drop all three within five counts."
Korra cocked a brow. "You sure about calling a five-count?"
"No," Aeros said. "Let's try anyway."
Her grin was quick and genuine. "Deal."
They split. Lenia swept her staff in a tight circle; lunar luminance draped the north pylon, its surface heat dipping just enough for Korra to flash in. Her twin blades slid between gleaming sigils, severing hair-thin channels of red light. The pylon keened like struck glass.
At the west pylon, Zhen flicked three talismans in a ripple—paper burning to ash mid-air, the ashes fusing into faint lines that crawled across stone. The pylon's runes stuttered and then froze, like a heartbeat held too long.
Toba hopped the lip of a fissure, slammed his guandao into a seam at the south pylon's base. Stone cracked. Huo leapt from his shoulders, throat ballooning; the fox gulped a stream of spillover flame and coughed out a gust of cooling vapor that condensed into pearly mist along the crack.
Aeros placed his palm on the capstone, eyes half-lidded. Solar Qi climbed into the pylon—no blast, just pressure, heat stacking heat until the capstone's glow went from red to white, then from white to clear.
"Now," he said.
Three things happened at once: Korra snapped her last filament, Zhen's bindings locked, and Toba's guandao levered the base free. The pylon's light died.
The shield around the banner flickered.
The second pylon's bind faltered—Zhen's jaw clenched, a fresh talisman already between his fingers—then held. The third pylon's base slid, Huo shrieked, and the full shield shattered like brittle sugar, dissolving into air. The banner fell a handspan and hovered, humming with sealed authority.
Aeros reached out and closed his hand around it.
The caldera boomed.
All three pylons cracked from top to bottom; fissures raced outward, new vents exhaling hell. The banner's hum deepened to a tone that thrummed in their bones—and a seam of light opened above the dais, sketching a gate in the air: a ring of spinning glyphs, its rim feathered with leaf-green motes.
"Wind Zone gate," Lenia said. "We did it."
"We did—" Korra stopped, eyes cutting to the right. "Hold up."
A thread of shadow uncoiled from the far ridge and resolved into a boy with wild black hair hovering an inch above the ground. He didn't disturb ash, didn't cast much of a shadow.
Another stepped beside him—tall, obsidian robes laced with blood-thread, expression flat, gaze sharp. Three more fanned behind: a short girl with orange-lit eyes chewing something, a hulking brute whose skin shimmered with heat-gloss, and a pale woman whose fingers lifted frost in a world that hated cold.
They had come quietly. They stood without noise.
Squad Six.
The tall boy in black—Vaen—looked at the cracked pylons, the open gate, the banner in Aeros's hand. The corner of his mouth moved a millimeter.
"Efficient," he said, voice smooth. "You saved us some time."
Korra stepped forward, but Lenia's staff brushed her arm. "Careful."
Aeros didn't put the banner away. He didn't raise it, either. He kept it low, his body relaxed, his Solar Qi banked under skin.
"You're late," he said. It wasn't taunt—just observation.
The girl with the orange eyes—Mai—smiled around her sliver of bark. "Or we're right on time." She looked at Korra's blades, Toba's guandao, Zhen's ash-marked fingers, Lenia's staff. "Nice spread. Cute fox."
Huo hissed, a spark stuttering off his tongue.
The hovering boy—Eryx—tilted his head almost imperceptibly. His voice was soft. "Five signatures. Team of nine? No. Team of five." Golden eyes flicked to Aeros. "One sun. Four moons."
The big man—Boros—said nothing. His knuckles flexed; stone crunched.
The woman with frost—Sila—didn't look at anyone. She looked at the gate. Ice soot blossomed around her hands and flickered out in the heat. "Wind will hold a while," she murmured, mostly to herself.
Vaen's gaze slid back to Aeros. "We'll take that banner."
Lenia's staff kissed the stone. "It won't count for us," she said evenly, "but it will for you."
"True," Vaen said. "Which is why we'll take it."
"Or," Aeros said, "you follow us through the Wind gate and take one that counts for both of us."
Mai laughed. "You think we do partnerships?"
"Temporary ones," Aeros said. "Every squad that gets stalled here will dogpile this gate. You know it, or you wouldn't have come quietly. We leave now, we both avoid a swarm. You try to snatch here, you get a fight you don't need."
For the first time, something like interest ticked behind Vaen's eyes. He looked at the cracked caldera—at the steam, at the brittle stone. He looked at the ringed light of the Wind gate; the glyphs were already beginning to drift inward, the seam shrinking.
Boros rumbled, "Gate closes."
"Soon," Sila said.
Zhen leaned toward Aeros, voice a thread. "I can spike the rim—hold it a little longer. Not long."
"Do it," Aeros whispered.
Zhen flicked a talisman; it burned blue instead of orange, and the Wind runes wavered, then steadied, buying heartbeats.
Vaen met Aeros's eyes again. "You're an outer-world noble."
Aeros didn't answer.
Mai watched the banner in his hand. "He's fourteen," she said, amused. "And Solar Radiance already. That's cute."
Korra's jaw pulsed. "Come say that closer."
"Korra," Lenia warned.
Vaen held up a hand without looking back at his team. His attention didn't leave Aeros. "We'll humor you for now," he said. "Wind Zone. If you slow us down, we take your legs first."
"Charming," Toba said.
"Better than honest," Mai replied brightly.
The caldera shuddered with a new groan, a fresh crack zipping past the dais. Lava sighed up in a lazy sheet.
"Talk later," Aeros said. "Move."
He didn't wait for permission. He stepped into the hollow of light and vanished—the banner's glow and his own folded into a single brightness. One by one, Squad Nine dove after him: Lenia with quick, controlled breaths; Korra with a grin that telegraphed trouble; Toba with Huo clinging to his collar; Zhen with his hands already preparing their next wards.
On the other ridge, Vaen turned to his team. "Go," he said.
Eryx flickered and was gone, noiseless as a swallowed breath. Mai popped another strip of bark between her teeth and disappeared after him. Boros took two steps that were small earthquakes and vanished. Sila lifted her hands, caught a momentary skein of frost in the heat, and let it melt on her palms before she stepped through, eyes distant.
Vaen went last. He paused on the edge of the light, looked back once at the broken pylons and the red world beyond, then stepped into wind.
—
They fell into green.
Heat gave way to cool drafts that tasted like rain. The ground beneath their feet wasn't stone anymore; it was glassy-hard air arranged into plates and paths that moved as if thinking for themselves. Sunlight shattered into shards across great bands of cloud. Far below, oceans wrinkled; far above, white birds the size of houses drifted on thermal columns. The Wind Zone was a cathedral of sky.
Aeros landed in a low crouch; the banner's flame went out in his hand, resolving into woven cloth bright as embers—dormant until ceremony. He tucked it into his ring.
Zhen's talisman winked out. The gate behind them dwindled to a ring, then a hoop, then a coin—then nothing at all.
"Roll call," Lenia said briskly. "Everyone in one piece?"
Korra flexed her fingers. "All good."
Toba patted Huo. The fox burped a tiny puff of white steam and looked extremely pleased with himself. "We're fine."
Zhen straightened, face a shade paler. "Gate spike took more than I expected. I'm okay."
Aeros inhaled, exhaled. The Wind Zone's Qi wasn't as dense as Fire's—but it moved, and he could move with it. His Solar Radiance didn't blaze in air the way it did on rock. It braided into currents, softer, harder to pin. He'd have to adjust.
"Eyes up," Korra said quietly.
Squad Six was already fanning out along a neighboring sky-path, each member separated by exactly the same distance, like someone had measured them with a string. Eryx drifted ahead of them, toes an inch above air, gaze raking horizons. Sila pinched her fingers and drew lace-thin frost into the air; it snapped and steamed away.
Vaen didn't look at Aeros as he spoke, voice carrying just enough. "First banner here is to the east. The sky paths spiral inward."
Lenia shot Aeros a look. You buying this?
"I can feel a pull that way," Aeros said. "He's not lying."
"Of course I'm not lying," Mai called back, overhearing easily. "We only lie when it hurts more."
"Comforting," Toba muttered.
Zhen tapped his wrist—twice. It was the signal they'd agreed on for not alone. Aeros lifted his chin the tiniest amount. Understood.
Wind sang along the paths. In the distance, something long and iridescent rolled through the clouds and left an oily rainbow wake. Closer, a flock of glass-winged falcons banked as one, turned as one, and went knife-straight toward a cluster of dark specks on a distant path.
"Rival squads," Lenia said.
"Multiple," Zhen added. "Three? Four?"
Korra cracked her knuckles. "Good. Let's—"
"Not good," Aeros said gently. "Rushing into a dogpile is how people get thrown off the map."
She shot him a sideways look. "You say that like it happened to you."
"It happened to someone previously," Aeros said. "He walked back. I'm not sure we would."
Korra didn't argue.
Paths forked and recombined like braided ribbons. On a span where two bands of hard air crossed without touching, Eryx hovered and listened to nothing. "We can reach the inner spiral faster if we cut across the slipstreams," he said to Vaen, then, as if remembering, said aloud, "There are currents you can't see."
"Show us," Vaen said.
Eryx dropped through empty air, then brushed his heel along an invisible plank and shot forward as if some hand had pulled him. He beckoned without looking back. Squad Six followed, almost casual.
"Okay," Korra said, watching them shoot ahead. "That's cheating."
"It's skill," Lenia said. But she was frowning.
Aeros squinted into the glare. The slipstreams weren't visible, but he could feel where sunlight moved quicker, where air bucked, where heat fell into cool like a hidden stairway. He stepped forward, tested a patch of nowhere, and felt it take his weight. He didn't leap. He shifted, letting a slant of Wind Qi grab his ankles and draw him sideways.
"Stay close," he said. "Step where I step."
He moved along the invisible seam, Zhen placing a hair-thin thread of talisman light behind them that faded as soon as it formed. Lenia kept the rear, hair plastered to her forehead, staff balanced for a parry that would do nothing against falling.
They took three such currents, then four. Each time, the Wind Zone rewarded them: a path that used to be far became near, a fork that would have cost time bent their way.
Eryx glanced back a single time when they landed on the same path four spans behind Squad Six. He didn't smile. He just looked—calm, yellow-eyed—and faced forward again.
The inner spiral announced itself without trumpet or light. It was simply quieter. The wind didn't bluster here; it whispered. The sky turned a deeper blue. The birds were gone. The glass paths had hairline cracks that healed when you blinked.
"Banner," Lenia said, pointing.
It was ahead and above: a white pennant threaded with pale green, fluttering in wind that wasn't there. It hung inside a open-sided shrine of bone-white struts and whorled knots. Under it, on the path, three squads were already milling—faces set, weapons drawn, looking at the prize and each other with the exact same calculation.
"Two from Stonecall, one from Thunderstep," Zhen murmured.
"Stonecall will anchor. Thunderstep will harry." Lenia's mouth tightened. "If we wait, five more squads will arrive."
Vaen didn't slow. "We go now," he said, and Squad Six went with him, formation narrowing to a spearpoint.
Korra cursed under her breath. "We following them?"
"We're following the opening they make," Aeros said. His heartbeat was steady; his Solar Qi hummed, braided with wind. "We don't have to like it."
The first Stonecall monk slammed his palms into the path and pulled up two waist-high bulwarks of hardened air. Thunderstep responded with a crackling sprint that left after-echoes like lightning in glass. Mai flicked a pinch of grey dust that turned into a short-lived green fog, the Stonecall bulwarks sweating and then slumping. Boros shouldered one without slowing and broke it anyway. Sila stepped to the side, touched her fingers to clear sky, and spread a knucklebone-thin sheet of frost under the Thunderstep runner's foot. He didn't fall—he shrieked and slid straight past the shrine.
"Lenia," Aeros said, and she was already moving, moonlight unrolling like a runner's ribbon over a short span of broken slats where a drop gaped. Korra took that ribbon in three quick steps and came up on the right as Toba surged left, Huo hopping down to lap streaks of wind like water and spit them out colder.
Zhen's talismans folded and snapped—one ward flared on a Stonecall blade and warped its angle, another turned a throw into a flutter. Aeros didn't call plays this time. He just was where he needed to be, moving with the wind, pushing his Solar Qi out not as a wall but as a tide. When a Thunderstep cultivator streaked in to tag Lenia's ribs, Aeros's palm crossed their path a half-inch from contact, a ripple of heat turning the strike into a shove that slipped past harmlessly. When Korra overcommitted on a feint, a draft caught her waist and set her foot where it needed to be.
"Stop helping," she snapped without heat.
"You're welcome," he said.
Squad Six drilled straight for the shrine. Vaen walked as if none of this was happening, his eyes never leaving the banner. Eryx bent the world in front of him, turning turbulence into rails. Mai blew a powder that wilted the grip on an axe. Boros bull-rushed the last bulwark. Sila lifted her hand toward the shrine itself—and the thin lattice around the banner crackled, rejecting the frost with a sound like ground glass.
"Can't cheat the seal," she said flatly.
"No need," Vaen said. He stepped into the shrine's threshold and stopped—not from fear, but because a band of wind, fine as wire, had tightened around his ankle.
Across the spiral, a woman in azure raised two fingers. "No stealing while we're all watching," she said pleasantly.
Lenia hissed. "A judge."
Aeros saw her too—a robed figure standing on air like it had never been anything else, hair pinned with a wind-etched needle, smile bright and not kind. She didn't belong to any squad. She belonged to the Colosseum.
"Terms remain," she said, voice rolling like a bell. "The shrine tests the entrants. If you approach, you accept. Interference from others invalidates your attempt."
Vaen didn't turn. "We accept."
The judge's smile broadened. "Then be clever."
A ring of glyphs rolled down from the shrine's lintel and nested around the floor. The air under Vaen's feet dropped half an inch, then held. The same ring traced itself under the path where Squad Nine stood—this time only faintly.
"What is it?" Korra asked.
"Puzzle," Zhen whispered, eyes scanning their own faint ring. "Weight. Rhythm. Sound. Balance trial."
"Translation," Toba said.
"Copy what the wind wants—or fall."
The first band pulsed under Vaen's boot. He stepped. The band pulsed again—left, right, forward, back—then drew a shape that was less a pattern than a breath. He matched it. Eryx followed—weightless enough that it almost didn't matter—then Sila, calm as frost forming. Boros matched it slowly, carefully. Mai did it as if dancing.
"Gate judge made it easy for them," Korra muttered.
"It'll change," Lenia said.
It did. The second ring rolled, and the path under Vaen went from solid to flexible to not there for a fraction of a heartbeat, then returned. He didn't fall. He smiled, just a little.
"Now," Aeros said quietly. "While they're in it."
Lenia blinked. "While they're—?"
Aeros pointed at the shrine's lintel. Faint runes moved there—the same runes that had appeared on the Fire Zone pylons. He didn't need to know their language to know their habits.
"Zhen," he said. "Give me six counts of mute on those glyphs when I say. Toba, anchor our path—not their ring. Korra, take the right cross-current; if one of them slips, you cut their angle so they don't plow into us. Lenia, mirror the rhythm—don't step in. Feed me the timing."
Korra eyed him. "You're trying to… sneak our attempt under theirs?"
"Not under," Aeros said. "Through."
Lenia's mouth crooked. "You're insane."
"Little bit."
He breathed in the Wind Zone—its clean, shifting, tricky mood—and didn't try to strangle it into a straight line. He let it turn his Solar Qi into something thinner and faster and subtler, something that could catch on to moving pieces without burning them. He set his foot at the edge of the trial ring.
"Now."
Zhen's talisman flashed a color Aeros had never seen—something between blue and clear. The glyphs on the lintel stuttered. Toba's guandao thudded into glass-air and made it hold. Lenia's staff tapped a six-beat counter at his back, steady and unhurried. Korra stepped to the right, weight forward, ready to slice a trajectory mid-fall.
Aeros moved.
He didn't imitate Vaen's path. He threaded the spaces between each of Squad Six's steps, treating their weight as a map. When the shrine wanted a foot where Vaen didn't put one, Aeros put his there—barely—then shifted again, two breaths behind, three notes higher. He didn't get cocky. He didn't try to get cute. He listened.
The ring hummed—a note that could have been approval or warning—then settled. When the final pulse rolled through the shrine floor, Aeros stepped into the open center and touched the Wind Banner.
It thrummed in his hand, cool and fierce.
The judge laughed once, delighted. "Clever."
Vaen turned his head just enough to see Aeros's hand close on the pennant. His expression didn't change.
For a heartbeat.
Mai breathed, "Well, that's annoying."
Boros's jaw worked. Sila's eyes narrowed the slightest fraction. Eryx blinked once.
Aeros didn't lift the banner high. He didn't brandish it. He stepped back, slow and neat, and the ring let him go.
"Let's move," he said—quiet, not gloating. "Before the others get ideas."
Lenia fell in beside him, something like a laugh stuck in her throat. "You do know you just stole a banner out from under a late-phase Lunar squad in front of a judge."
"We borrowed timing," Aeros said. "There's a difference."
Korra's grin was feral. "He's pretending there's a difference."
Zhen exhaled with shaky relief. "It counted. I felt the seal imprint on your ring."
"Good," Toba said. He slung his guandao across his back. "Then let's not be here when their tempers catch up to their manners."
A new wind spilled over the inner spiral—fresh, wet, carrying a smell like moss and rock.
"Earth Zone gate will be down-spiral," Lenia said. "Wind feeds earth."
"Or up," Zhen said. "Wind erodes, too."
Aeros looked to where the paths braided into distance. Far away, tiny sparks winked—the kind fights make. He set his jaw, kept his step light, and didn't look back at Vaen.
Behind them, Vaen finally lifted his chin, eyes on the empty shrine. He didn't curse. He didn't shout.
"Better than honest," Mai murmured, half a smile, echoing herself.
"Next time," Boros said.
Eryx hovered an inch closer to the path. "They're not like the others."
"No," Sila said softly. She watched the space where Aeros had stood. Frost dusted the tips of her fingers and died. "They're not."
Vaen's voice, when it came, was even. "We go to Earth," he said. "We can't afford to trail them far."
He didn't say it, but they all felt it: this wasn't pride anymore. It was caution.
Squad Six moved as one, spearpoint reforming.
Ahead, crossing into new wind, Squad Nine finally felt like a team moving at one rhythm—different strengths, one intention. Two banners secured—one that opened a gate, one that counted. A third waiting in stone.
"Keep your heads," Aeros said, as the world tilted toward green. "We haven't met the worst of this yet."
"Understatement of the year," Korra muttered.
Lenia smirked. "Shut up and step."
Toba laughed once, Huo chirped like a kettle, and Zhen brushed the rim of a fresh talisman, eyes scanning a sky that felt bigger than it had a moment before.
They walked.
And wind walked with them.