Didn't plan to," Aeros said. "Different zone, different rules."
As if summoned, a judge unfolded out of the shrine's shadow. This one was a man of stone-hewn lines, wearing brown that wasn't fabric so much as dust held together by ritual. His hair was braided like roots. The plaza was quiet when he spoke; quiet in a way that meant it had always been listening.
"Approach as five," the judge said. "Stand as one. Take the weight that is given and give it back. Fail, and the ground that holds you will forget your name."
Korra made a face. "Hate this zone's poetry."
"The ground remembers everything," Zhen said automatically.
"That's what I said," the judge replied without humor, which made Korra snort.
Vaen didn't break gaze. "Two teams," he said. "One shrine. How does the ground solve that?"
"Two paths," the judge said. He lifted a hand. The plaza split itself like bread torn cleanly. Two half-circles formed, each gaining its own ring of inlaid stone, each ring filled with plates the size of shields. Glyphs ghosted over them—then sank, leaving only blankness.
"Stand where the ground chooses," the judge said. "Hold. The shape you make is the key to the lock above. Breathe together. The banner will not come down for a quarreling heart."
Korra glanced at Aeros. "So… music class."
"Kind of," he said. "But with cliffs."
"Lovely."
Vaen gestured once. Squad Six stepped onto their ring, pausing only long enough for Sila to brush her fingertips along the edge of a plate and for Eryx to hover and listen to nothing. Their five plates lit—dimly, like embers under ash.
Aeros took Squad Nine to the other ring. The plates under their feet were dead as stone. Then, one by one, five plates brightened: under Lenia, Toba, Zhen, Korra—then a plate that wasn't under Aeros, but one step to his left. He moved without thinking. The light settled.
"Breathe," the judge said.
Aeros drew air. Lenia matched him without looking. Zhen followed a half-beat late, needing correction. Korra hummed under her breath. Toba's chest rose and fell like he was matching a bellows to a forge.
The plates under them warmed. Heavy. Not physically, spiritually. Earth Qi rose through feet and calves and spine until every small tremor of a too-fast breath felt like a misplayed note.
"Don't fight it," Lenia murmured. "Match it."
Zhen swallowed, then slowed, his breaths falling into a four-count the zone demanded. Korra's hum became a low whistle, then silence as she learned the beat. Toba's eyes went soft-focused; Huo climbed to his shoulder and went very, very still.
Aeros felt the shape start to arise under them, the shape the ground wanted them to make. It wasn't a line. It was a loop, a circle like a seed ring. He stepped one shoe-length outward, and the plate under him approved with a deeper warmth. Lenia took a quarter step inward. Zhen bent his knee and lowered his weight; his plate brightened. Toba widened his stance, anchoring the left side of the circle. Korra shifted two inches, lips pressed thin, sweat on her temples, and the ring's light pulled itself into a single, unbroken band.
Above them, in the crown of the shrine, a lock they couldn't see turned.
"Hold," the judge said, and the plates got heavier.
Across the split, Squad Six held too, vaunted, practiced. Vaen's chest barely moved. Eryx's didn't move at all; he might not have been breathing. Sila blinked slowly, frost nowhere on her hands here. Mai chewed her bark and didn't fidget; her plate didn't like fidgets. Boros bore weight like he'd been born to it. Their ring brightened. Another piece of the crown turned.
Two locks, one crown, Aeros realized. Both rings have to complete. Earth wanted people to cooperate whether they liked it or not.
His thighs began to shake just a tremor. Not effort; the effort of not moving. Sweat made his palms slick. He widened and then un-widened his stance by a hair, feeling for where the ring wanted his weight. Strength meant nothing here. Patience did.
"Three more breaths," the judge said, without saying which kind. The plates took that as permission to triple their pull.
Zhen's mouth pinched. A talisman fluttered from his sleeve—a habit—and Aeros said softly, "No," and Zhen immediately shut his hand, eyes apologetic.
"Two," Lenia said. "One."
The rings sang.
It wasn't a sound you could hear with ears. It was what your bones heard when a long-stuck thing finally gave. The crown's inner ribs rolled; the banner's tether unwound soundlessly and dropped into reach. It didn't fall. It hung exactly at arm's length like Earth saying, If you must.
"Take it," Lenia said.
"Together," Aeros said, and reached with them: five hands under his, not because they needed to share Qi, but because the ground had demanded a shape and they were going to honor it all the way through. The cloth was rough and soft at once, old as hills, light as breath.
The judge inclined his head an inch. "Return with what you have or lose it to those who remember faster," he said, which was Earth for run along.
The plaza stitched itself back closed; the rings faded. Squad Six stepped off their ring without looking at the banner in Aeros's hand. Vaen met his eyes, unreadable.
"We don't trail you because we like your company," he said.
"I know," Aeros said. "You're welcome."
Mai laughed, delighted. Boros snorted. Eryx… blinked. Sila's gaze lingered on the banner; a kind of hunger there, but quiet, like a woman in winter thinking about a hot spring.
"Gate?" Lenia asked.
The light came up from the ground this time, a wide hoop like a mouth opening in stone. Fire color pulsed in its rim, and the air hitting their ankles smelled like ash and iron.
"Back to origin," Zhen said. "Fire Zone."
Toba pulled Huo close. "And every squad that's been waiting to steal from the first idiot to go home."
Korra's grin was sharp. "So not us."
Aeros tucked the Earth banner into his ring next to Wind's. He didn't look at Vaen again. He didn't need to. He felt Squad Six's attention like a weight he'd carry a long time.
"We go together," he said. "We don't split. We don't stop at the gate mouth. We move."
Lenia tapped her staff once. "You heard him."
They stepped into the light.
Heat hit them like a shout. The Fire Zone's red sky opened above; familiar now in the way a battlefield is familiar. The ridge where they'd first arrived lay ahead, pylons cracked, new vents grumbling. And halfway down the slope toward their origin point, three squads were already there, clustered like wolves, eyes on the teams banner ring.
"Company," Korra said, satisfied.
Zhen's breath quickened. Lenia touched his shoulder. "In through the nose. Four beats. Out for six."
He did.
Aeros drew the sun into his throat and let it warm behind his tongue. Noon had passed, but some the lingering energy had stayed with him. He could spend it or he could save it.
Toba set his guandao. Huo's chuckle was a kettle boiling.
"Remember," Aeros said, eyes on the slope, on the three squads, on the space between those squads like lines on a map. "The goal isn't to win a fight. The goal is to get home."
"Sounds like winning a fight," Korra said, already bouncing on her heels.
"Only if they get in the way," Aeros answered, and then he moved; down through heat and ash, his team a circle around him, Earth and Wind burning a line on his ring like a promise the ground itself would hold him to.
Behind them, at the gate's rim, Squad Six watched for exactly one breath.
"Now they run into their own wolves," Mai said, amused.
"Good," Vaen said. He rolled his shoulders, loosening nothing that had been tight. "We'll be right behind them when the bite lands."
Sila's fingers bloomed frost that died. "Or ahead," she murmured.
Eryx had already vanished.
The Fire Zone drew its first new breath of this part of the trial. It smelled like stone dust and old grudges.
And the race home began.