The announcement of the Academy's joint practicum fell like a stone into a placid lake—a lake whose stillness had always been illusion. Ripples spread instantly among the students, chatter clattering through lecture halls and mess tables.
The field was set: Sector Seven, outer Ashen Gorge. That ragged boundary where Silver Star's walls pressed against the wild. A frontier haunted by fissures in reality, where the Abyss leaked. The army and Academy swept it regularly, but still remnants stalked there: Eroders, Hunters, and worse—aberrants whose shapes bore too much hunger and not enough sense.
All cadets who had passed the first-year trials would march. The teams would follow the old doctrine: Weaver + Vigil, intellect braided with force.
Elara's name was tied, predictably, to Breck Ironanvil. Arms crossed, muscles knotted like chains, he looked down at her with open disdain—and something uglier, a glint gifted to him by Cecilia Frostborne's whispers. Elara did not doubt that Cecilia had a "surprise" waiting for her in the Gorge.
Cecilia herself had drawn a solid partner: a second-tier Riftsmasher of the Ironfang cadet line. When the list was read, she cast Elara a look across the room, blue eyes sharp as ice shards, lips curling in the secret smile of a viper about to strike.
Kaelan Blackwood, saint and Academy paragon, loomed above all this. As supervising officer of the practicum, his presence carried a gravity both reassuring and suffocating. He found Elara before departure, his tone gentle but wrapped around iron.
"Elara, the Gorge is not a classroom. Every breath there carries whispers that would like nothing more than to gnaw their way into you. I've arranged matters—your Sector is one of the safer patrol zones. Breck may be crude, but he has some grit. Wear the brooch I gave you. Always. It will shield you. And I—" his smile thinned, "—will always feel where you are. Remember: no straying beyond your zone. No risks. No foolishness."
His concern glittered like gilded bars.
But Elara was no longer a caged bird waiting to be admired. In the days before the march she slipped once more into Gear Alley, masked, trading not smiles but concoctions.
From her own vials—Nightwalker's Draught to sharpen the eyes in darkness, Steelbone Elixir to harden marrow and sinew—she bought with Silas's help things she could never request openly. A leather map marked with terrain and resource nodes the army had not admitted existed. A pouch of Ghost-Dust, traceless powder that could blind scent and sound. And, most pointed of all, a warning.
"The Gorge has been noisy," Silas said, wiping the face of a ticking abyssal detector. His gray-blue eyes cut sideways at her. "Not just your little lambs in uniform. Some wolves in sheepskin are sniffing around too. Keep those eyes wide, little mouse, or you'll end up their appetizer."
The Brotherhood Below, perhaps. Or worse.
The night before departure, Elara packed by the light of a single lamp in the broom-closet sanctum. The Academy's standard kit—medpack, tranquilizers—she had already swapped with her own sharper versions. In hidden linings she tucked special draughts, ghost-dust, that battered old notebook, and a hand-sketched route built atop Silas's map.
She added, deliberately, a smaller pouch of remedies and fortifiers—for Leon. Through the dangerous tether of Cassian/Rook she had secured him a place in the march: officially a support aide, tasked with carrying supplies and tinkering with gear. In truth, it was a chance for him to test the fragile flame of his awakening in the crucible of real danger. Risky, yes—but the only path forward.
Her fingers brushed the cool necks of potion-bottles. No fear stirred in her now. Only a calculation, honed sharp as glass, and a resolve as cold as forged iron.
On the surface, this practicum was the Academy's test. Beneath, it was her own trial: to slip Cecilia's nets, to dodge Kaelan's leash, to survive the Gorge's whispering dark, and to harvest rare reagents that could not be begged for under sunlight. Perhaps even to spy the secrets the Brotherhood and the Abyss both tried to bury.
When at last she doused the lamp, the closet fell to black. In that dark her green eyes caught the faintest glint, like tempered emeralds quenched in ice.
Dawn would bring the Gorge's winds. And with them, the trumpet of a true trial.
She was ready.