"Destroy our decks?" Noah nearly choked on his drink. "For what?"
"I think I get it." Maya looked at Natalia, working it through out loud. "We finished all five of our decks already. That door's closed. The only way to put real hardship on ourselves again, the kind that pushes past a limit, is to go backward first. Destroy all five. Start from nothing."
"That's right." Natalia's eyes narrowed, and something resolute burned behind them. "We let the four of them go first. Then we do it. We ask John to point us at the worst trial, cave, or dungeon he knows, and we start over from the bottom. We have the resources to climb fast. We just need the will to go past where we stopped."
"I like it." Kira smiled, slow and certain. "I'm in."
Jian, Kayla, Emma, and Julian arrived at the table right as she said it.
"And were you going to tell the rest of us about this, or not?" Emma asked, pouting.
