The morning after Fayea's impossible victory over Raiden Shough, the academy's hostility toward Team Heart was no longer one of dismissive laughter, but one of bitter, concentrated focus. The quiet defiance of a Celestial Wizard had proven that sentiment could be a terrifying weapon, and the other Crests adjusted their strategies accordingly. Team Heart was no longer the punchline; they were the unpredictable variable.
Day 2 of the Arcane Relic Games opened with the Elemental Maze, a massive structure of shifting, elemental-infused walls designed to test not raw power, but strategy, speed, and communication. The challenge: locate and retrieve three hidden Relic Shards scattered within the labyrinth before the opposing team.
Today's opponents were Team Clover (♣️), the Crest of Stealth and Trickery. Clover mages were masters of illusion, shadow, and misdirection, their power based on exploiting doubt and sensory overload.
In the staging area, the contrast between the teams was stark. The Clover Captain, a slight, nervous-looking boy named Lysander, was surrounded by his unit, whispering complicated, synchronized commands. Team Heart, meanwhile, was a spectacle of discord.
"The maze is designed to exploit emotional friction," Nova Starling stated, her silver eyes darting between her topographical diagrams and her teammates. "Clover will use environmental illusions to isolate us. We must move as one unit to maintain a constant line of sight."
"As one unit?" Aero Swiftwing scoffed, already floating a foot above the ground. "Nova, the only thing we agree on is that this whole school is a joke. And, Captain," he added, looking at Fayea with an arched eyebrow, "your magic is great for disarming a fight, but what does starlight do against a wall of fake rock?"
"It reveals what is real," Fayea said simply. She looked at Jett Valar, who was pacing, leaving faint scorch marks in the concrete. "Jett, your fire is volatile. If you use it, you risk collapsing the entire structure on us."
Jett merely glared, his hands smoldering. "I'll burn down the whole damn maze if it gets us out faster. I don't follow soft rules."
Only Terra Stonehaven offered her usual silent support, her large hands kneading a small, dense clump of rock that felt like granite.
We are not united by agreement, but by necessity, Fayea thought, accepting the chaos. We must rely on our differences.
Into the Labyrinth of Doubt
The horn sounded, and both teams vanished into the entrance of the towering, mist-shrouded maze.
Inside, the environment immediately became a sensory assault. Walls of living, shifting ice appeared where there had been stone; the sound of rushing water echoed from every direction; and shadows danced in the periphery, whispering names and mocking failures.
Team Clover excelled at creating psychological pressure. They didn't need to hurt you physically; they just needed to make you doubt your senses and your team.
Within three minutes, the Heart team was struggling.
"We need to go left! My calculations show the shortest path!" Nova ordered, pointing a precise finger down a dark, narrow corridor.
"Wrong," Aero hissed, his head tilted as if listening to the wind. "The ambient pressure is too low there. It's a dead end, or worse, a crushing chamber. We go up!" He shot upward, creating a miniature vortex to lift himself over the wall, leaving the others behind.
"Stop!" Terra yelled, her voice a deep, resonant warning. She slammed a hand onto a nearby wall, using her Earth magic to sense the structural truth. "Nova is wrong. Aero is wrong. The wall to our right is fake, a sound illusion. The true path is through the rock!"
As they argued, the environment retaliated. The corridor abruptly narrowed, and the air around Terra and Nova began to compress violently—a calculated maneuver by Clover's air mage, using Aero's own discipline against them.
Fayea, watching her team fracture under the pressure, felt the familiar spiritual drain of exhaustion from the day before. She realized the core of the problem: They saw the maze as a physical battle; it was a battle of belief.
Lysander's voice, artificially amplified and dripping with condescension, echoed from the illusory shadows: "Team Heart, you are defined by your divisions! Your faith is a lie; your unity is a myth! You will never be Spade!"
The Celestial Signal
In that moment of total division, Fayea stepped forward. She knew a physical counter would only amplify the chaos. She had to force them to see the truth.
She closed her eyes, ignoring the sight of the walls closing in on Terra and Nova, ignoring Jett's suppressed, volatile fire magic, and ignoring the sound of the mocking voices. She reached out with her Celestial Origin, not to attack the illusion, but to connect with the very essence of reality within the maze.
"CELESTIAL TRUTH: UNVEILING," she whispered.
A wave of pure, crystalline light emanated from her body, spreading out like a gentle tidal wave. The light was not hot, nor was it forceful. It was truth.
When the light washed over the surrounding walls and illusions, the effect was stunning:
The walls of shifting ice and stone were revealed to be nothing but shimmering air.
The sound of rushing water became a pathetic, amplified drip-drip-drip.
Most importantly, the light revealed the Relic Shards—glowing fragments of metal—which were not hidden in chests, but were hanging in mid-air, concealed only by thick shadow illusions.
The entire maze, suddenly stripped of its illusionary power, was rendered transparent. The Heart team could now see the frustrated Clover mages hiding behind what they thought were solid walls.
"The air is clean!" Aero shouted, instantly realizing the illusion had failed. The oppression lifted.
"The path is straight ahead, 20 meters, through the illusory ceiling!" Nova calculated with manic speed, her silver eyes glinting now that she had accurate data.
Terra, the pressure released, slammed her foot down and used her Earth magic to instantly construct a simple, straight bridge of polished stone that ran directly across the maze floor, ignoring the now-transparent walls.
"JETT!" Fayea called out, her voice ringing with command. "Give us the light!"
Jett, surprised by the order, hesitated for a second, then obeyed. He channeled a torrent of his volatile Fire magic, but this time, under the influence of the pure Celestial light that had momentarily cleaned the atmosphere of deceit, the fire was focused and controlled. It became a pure, stable beacon of white-hot plasma, not a volatile explosion.
Aero, acting as the team's carrier, grabbed Nova, and they rocketed across Terra's stone bridge, using Jett's fire as a literal floodlight against any residual shadows. They zipped past the stunned Clover mages, Nova precisely grabbing the three exposed Relic Shards in seconds.
The Heart Crest Glows
The Clover Captain, Lysander, realized they were defeated. Seeing the Celestial Truth magic at work, he frantically tried one last tactic: a mass illusion designed to scatter the Heart team's sight lines one last time.
But it was too late. Fayea's Celestial light was already tied to the four elemental masters.
As the team reconverged, the magical feedback from the recovered shards caused the Heart Crest on Fayea's tunic to flare. It was no longer the soft, diffused starlight of her quiet conviction. For the first time, the Crest of Faith glowed with a powerful, centralized, vibrant gold light—a powerful, constant beacon of unity that pushed back the remaining shadows of the labyrinth.
The team, for the first time, saw themselves not as outcasts, but as Caelestara's true five-point star.
The maze instantly recognized the completion of the task. The horn blared, and the stone walls of the arena dissolved.
"TEAM HEART WINS! ELEMENTAL MAZE COMPLETED IN RECORD TIME!"
The arena, silent after the unexpected victory over Spade, now erupted in a cacophony of confused, disbelieving noise.
In the center of the now-open arena, Team Heart stood together: Terra, solid and unmoving; Nova, triumphant over the data; Aero, radiating cocky relief; Jett, still angry but with a hint of surprised pride; and Fayea, spiritually drained but radiating conviction.
Fayea looked at her teammates. The hostility hadn't vanished, but the necessity for their bond had solidified. They had won, not by individual strength, but by unity, with Fayea's faith magic acting as the unseen, perfect catalyst.
Aero clapped Fayea on the shoulder, a rare moment of non-sarcastic praise. "Alright, Captain. I'll admit it. Your sparklers are good for something other than annoying Raiden. You made us see the truth. That's a nasty weapon against illusionists."
Jett, however, simply walked over and kicked a loose stone, his voice a low grunt. "The next challenge won't be tricks. It'll be power. And your faith shield won't last forever."
"Perhaps not," Fayea said, her voice firm. "But yesterday, you saw that power is nothing without a source. Today, you saw that a shield is nothing if you don't know where the attack is coming from. The next challenge is Knowledge. And for that, we need to trust Nova."
She looked up at the Spade stands. Oblivion Draventh was gone. His chair was empty. The Dragon Prince was no longer content to simply observe the threat. He had removed himself from public view, likely retreating to calculate the impossible variable: how to destroy a team that wins by working together.
The Heart Crest on Fayea's tunic pulsed one last time before settling into a warm, constant glow. The outcasts were learning to believe in their own power.