They ran the ridge like a drawn bow—Aeros at center, the others a tightening ring around him. Three squads waited below like wolves around a carcass, each daring another to make the first lunge.
"Left gap," Aeros said, eyeing the space between two banners and a broken vent. "We cut there. Don't stop, don't posture."
Lenia's staff kissed stone. "On you."
Korra's blades spun once, bright and hungry. "About time."
Zhen breathed in for four, out for six—just like Lenia drilled him. Toba rolled his shoulder; Huo chittered, flame-flecked tongue tasting the heat from inside his cloak.
They slid into the seam like they belonged to it. Zhen palmed a talisman and slapped a ward over a scorched boulder; it bloomed into a shimmering pane and turned three spear thrusts into glancing taps. Lenia's moonlit arc bent a blast of cinder-wind around their backs. Toba's guandao knocked a hammer upward with a crack that rolled the wielder off his feet. Korra flickered forward and left neat lines on wrist, thigh, shoulder—nonlethal, efficient.
Aeros didn't grandstand. He read currents—heat, wind, fear—then put his palm where a strike needed to miss, his heel where a foot needed to skid. When a lance drove for his ribs, a thin sheet of Solar Qi slid between steel and skin; when a fire-bead fizzed under Zhen's boot, a breath of sun dispersed it into harmless sparkle.
They were almost through when the world… quieted.
A hush curled around the slope, carrying a scent that didn't belong to Fire at all—cool iron after rain. Ash in the air settled as if told to be still. The waiting squads stopped moving before they knew why.
A figure stood on the black lip above the origin point, where the ridge narrowed to a blade.
Dark battle armor—matte, starless. A half-cape that moved like spilled ink. A narrow gorget hid her throat; a helm rested at her hip. No sect emblem. The only color was a thin ring along each gauntlet, a faint, shifting gray like the edge of an eclipse. Her skin was fair olive, smooth and sunless, catching light like polished stone. Her eyes—cool eclipse-gold—carried a faint dark halo around each iris that tightened when she focused, dusk closing over a small sun. Dark hair, braided close for combat, framed clean lines: straight nose, steady mouth, a brow that rarely furrowed even when blades sang. Otherworldly beautiful in a way armor shouldn't allow: not delicate—composed.
Tall, too. The air tested itself around her and chose to be quiet.
Three words slid through the crowd like knives through silk:
"Veyra. Night-Glass."
Korra actually stopped. "You're kidding."
Lenia's jaw set. "She entered?"
"I thought she was sitting this cycle out," Zhen whispered.
Toba grunted; Huo's ears pressed flat.
Veyra looked down the slope as if the squads were marks on a ledger. When she spoke, her voice was clear and very calm.
"Return paths are closed."
As if on cue, thin lines burned to life along the ridge—circles of ash that had slept in the rock since dawn. Arrays woke under boots and around ankles, weaving into a single Ashlock Ring that cut the slope into three tiers. Vents exhaled together; the ground hardened into a new pattern.
"Schemes," Lenia murmured. "All day long."
A lacquered-red captain below winced. "Damn her. She seeded the ridge at first bell."
Aeros glanced at Zhen.
Zhen was already kneeling. "Bridge wards… deadfall binds… and—" his eyes widened—"a banner siphon."
Lenia's gaze snapped to Aeros's ring. He didn't move his hand, but Solar Qi tightened under his skin.
Veyra started down the ridge toward them without hurry. Heat fled the edges of her step. Two figures flanked her—a sable-clad spearwoman and a man with a ring of throwing blades—but they felt like punctuation. The sentence was hers.
"Squad Nine," she said, reading from a list she'd already memorized. "You are two-thirds qualified. You will not pass here."
Korra lifted her chin. "Not big on introductions, huh?"
Veyra's eyes found Korra, then passed through her like light through glass. "You can call me Veyra," she said, and looked to Aeros. "Your cultivation…" A note—surprise, almost too small to hear—then cool evaluation. "At fourteen."
Murmurs hissed. Vaen, watching from a fractured ledge above with Squad Six, tilted his head a fraction.
Aeros held her gaze. "Same."
The slope felt that word.
Veyra half opened her gauntlet, palm outward—no flourish. "Your sun is not ours," she said. "Show me how it burns."
Korra's hand rose. "We don't need—"
Lenia caught her wrist. "We do."
Aeros stepped just far enough that the line between them was clean. "No killing," he said. Not a condition—a promise.
"You won't die today," Veyra answered, as if that choice was hers to make.
Aeros smiled. If she'd known the truth, it might have rattled even her. Beneath his robe, the skin over his sternum held the faint shimmer of a Moonseal—Aria's work before he left home. By blood and training Aeros had already reached Golden Radiance in body refinement: bones tempered like sun-forged iron, tendons braided with Qi, marrow drinking heat like nectar, skin that could flex and lock like layered scales, a heartbeat that could shift rhythm to bleed force across muscle chains, and a micro-control over fibers down to the tremble of a finger. In open sun he could have turned mass into speed and speed back into mass—weight-projection, bone-echo, reflex-loops—and make a punch land as if a mountain had leaned in to help.
The Moonseal forbade all of that.
It sat over his sternum like dew that never dried, three knots of pale light bound to three vows: don't break what you don't understand; don't reveal what you can't protect; don't lean on gifts you didn't earn. It capped his explosive output, softened weight-projection into simple footwork, damped bone-echo, and locked the fascia-channels that let bloodline power flood his frame. It let two concessions pass: baseline toughness—his flesh still harder than steel when braced—and healing—his cells sang to sunlight and knitted faster than fear could speak. If he tried to force the seal, it didn't resist; it simply rewrote his intent into safer shapes. To anyone watching, he would look like a very stable Solar Radiance cultivator with an annoyingly fast recovery. Only he knew how much was sleeping.
The Ashlock Ring thrummed. Runes rolled beneath the black glass, and the world narrowed to a circle that admitted two bodies and nothing else. Heat broke at the edge and slid away; sound dimmed to a steady hiss. No judges' eyes—only the formation's.
Veyra moved first—not fast, exact. Her Qi didn't flare; it refracted, trimming the noon from the sun and making something colder. When her gauntlet struck, the air didn't crack; it sank, as if pressed by an invisible hand.
Aeros met her with heat and angle. His Radiance spread in a thin plane and folded into a wedge that turned her pressure sideways. Sparks crawled along their forearms—white and black, like two kinds of dawn.
She tested him. He let her. Three exchanges: a parry on his outer line, a slip at his hip, a palm that would've clipped his jaw if he were a blink slower—then she changed tempo. Shoulder dipped, elbow closed, and her next strike rode a shadow cadence that didn't belong to Fire at all.
His noon hum stuttered.
Lenia's breath caught. "Eclipse style."
"In Fire?" Zhen whispered.
"That's cheating," Korra hissed.
"That's training," Toba said.
He didn't panic. When her gauntlet made the air heavy, he made his Qi thin and fast, slipping under weight like oil under a door. When she dulled his light, he drew more lines instead of more power, cutting the field into threads she couldn't hold at once.
The fourth exchange was theirs together. The fifth was almost his—her wrist tipping past where he wanted it—then she clipped his forearm with a short, ugly elbow that sang to bone.
Aeros grinned, sudden and young. "Okay."
Silver eyes stayed calm. "Again."
They moved. The ring held them like a problem that keeps two minds in a room. Veyra's footwork was unremarkable until it wasn't; each ordinary step set up the impossible one. Aeros's palms kissed armor and left no scorch; her knuckles tapped ribs and left no bruise. Heat curled off the circle, failed to enter, and fell back like rain that forgot how.
Outside, Veyra's two teammates worked. The spearwoman hammered the Ashlock's rhythm with precise jabs; the blade-man traced three sigils in ash each pass—anchor, bind, siphon—the last pulsing in time with the banners in Aeros's ring.
"They're stealing," Zhen breathed. "Designed for returning squads with two—redirects the imprint!"
"Counter?" Lenia asked.
"Maybe… but if I break the siphon, it feeds the bind. The Ashlock will clamp on Aeros."
"We cut the handlers," Korra said.
Toba barred her with an arm and flicked his chin at Vaen's line above. Hunters watching hunters spring traps. "You cut them, we get dogpiled."
"Then—"
"Trust me," Aeros said from inside the ring, not looking back. His steady tone made their chests ache.
Veyra heard it. She pressed. He gave ground—not because she forced him, because he wanted a different angle. She slid with him and, in the space they both abandoned, Zhen sent a talisman through the ring—thin as hair—and it settled on the Ashlock glyph drawing threads of light from Aeros's ring.
The siphon dimmed. The bind brightened.
The circle tightened.
Veyra's eyes flicked to the ash—back to him. "A good team," she said. For her, generous.
"Yours too," he said—and meant it.
She stepped, and he knew—before it landed—that this one might hurt. He started the counter; she changed the question. Her gauntlet turned; the ring hummed; his Radiance surged to answer heat and found shadow instead. Knuckles kissed his sternum. The Moonseal cooled—absorbing, redirecting—and his Solar flow folded, not from lack but from the Ashlock's rhythm.