They left the origin point at a run and dropped into a world made of water and light.
The Water Zone didn't roar, it was suttle. Rivers crossed in the open like blue arrays, sliding over shelves of slate and pearl; cataracts fell in sheets as thin as silk; shallow basins mirrored the sky so perfectly that a step in the wrong mirror became a dive.
"Slow feet," Lenia said, staff already probing for false bottoms. "If you can see your face, it's probably a hole."
Korra tested a path with the flat of a blade. "If I fall in, I'm blaming you."
"You always blame me," Lenia replied.
Zhen had talismans between all ten fingers—paper reeds ready to plant. Toba let Huo ride on his head; the fox flicked water off his whiskers and made tiny tsk noises at the taste.
Aeros took the lead and didn't rush. The former ache under his sternum where Verya's blow landed had long healed but his mind still thought of it. The bruise wasn't the lesson. The failure to predict it was.
Korra fell in beside him, voice low. "She rattled you?"
He shook his head. "Intrigued me."
Lenia glanced over. "Meaning?"
"She stole brightness from my lines," he said, eyes on the current. "Not power—clarity. Eclipse is a timing theft. I answered with more heat; she answered with a smaller question."
Korra squinted. "Smaller… question."
"Shorter path," he said. "She never took big swings. Even her feints were honest."
Lenia's mouth curved, just a little. "You paid attention."
"Hard not to," he said, and almost smiled.
They ran a shelf where the river thinned to lace, then stepped onto a clear pane that wasn't glass so much as stubborn water—firm only when touched at the right angle. Zhen dropped reed-wards behind them that grew into lines, marking a way back if the zone's environment changed.
"New trick?" Korra asked when Aeros lifted his palm and the light bent, not brighter but neater, spreading in filaments that didn't glare.
He nodded. "Sun-split. Make smaller lines and let them intersect. If she tries to dull one, the others keep the rhythm."
"Will that work?" Zhen asked.
Aeros didn't pretend. "Maybe." His thoughts randomly drifted to Kian who he hadn't see in the trials yet, wondering what the guy was up to, hoping he wouldn't have to pummel him.
Toba chuckled. "Then we'll just get faster."
They crossed a mirrored basin by stepping on their reflections, Zhen's wards keeping each image true for a heartbeat longer than nature allowed. Lenia skated a moonlit guard over thin ice that wasn't ice at all; Korra knifed wind-born spray into spears that pinned a snapping, eel-long thing before it could coil around their ankles. Huo stole a fish and ate it in three smug bites.
At a series of low falls, the water folded in on itself like origami. Aeros stopped on the lip and watched the fold-lines. The zone wanted to re-route them into the long way west. He moved two steps left, drew a line of heat along the air a finger's breadth above the surface, and the fold relaxed.
"So this is talent," Lenia murmured with a smirk. "Learning on the fly."
"From a short fight?" Korra said, half disbelief.
"Short can be sharp," Lenia said.
"Is anyone else going to admit she was terrifying?" Zhen asked.
"Terrifying," Toba said promptly. "Also polite."
Korra snorted. "Polite like a cliff."
"Polite like a surgeon," Lenia corrected.
They made ground. Twice, Vaen's team appeared as shadows on a farther bank, then vanished into reeds that weren't there a moment later. No skirmish. No posturing. Just pressure: you're not alone.
A low horn rolled through mist—three notes, none friendly.
"Half the field gone," Lenia said. "Timer's bleeding."
"Good," Korra muttered. "Less traffic."
"Bad," Zhen said. "More hungry survivors."
Aeros stopped at the edge of an open lagoon where standing stones grew out of the water like teeth. He crouched and touched two fingers to the surface. Ripples ran out in rings that tilted, intersected, and came back to him bearing news.
"There," he said, pointing to a cluster of black stones fanged around a hollow. "Banner shrine sits under that. It'll want balance."
"Everything here wants balance," Korra said.
"Everything everywhere wants balance," Lenia said. "We just don't always listen."
They didn't rush the stones. Zhen tested five paths; two sank, one lied, one circled. The fifth hummed underfoot like a taut string.
"Hear that?" Aeros asked.
Korra cocked her head. "Hear what?"
"Song in the floorboards," Toba said. "Old trick. You put your breath on it, it either likes you or it spits you."
"Ladies first," Korra said dryly, but she stepped anyway. The stone accepted her with a soft yes. Lenia followed, then Zhen. Toba went last on the hummer, guandao held horizontal like a balance bar.
A breath-later, a judge rose out of the water like a woman waking from a long nap. She wore river-colored cloth that always seemed to be moving, and her hair held combs made of translucent bone. The lagoon quieted, as if her presence took the splashing personally.
"Five nets," she said, voice low and kind. "Cast them together. Draw in what does not belong. Return what does. Keep what remains. If you make the water ugly, the water will answer."
Korra peered at the hollow. "And if we guess wrong?"
"You swim," the judge said. She wasn't smiling.
Five shallow bowls floated into place before each of them, ripples silvering their rims. The water inside each bowl wasn't water; it was memory—blue images sliding like fish.
Lenia's bowl showed a child retrieving a lost toy and a thief returning a ring. Zhen's showed a soldier throwing a spear and a farmer pulling a stone from a field. Toba's showed a fox carrying fire to a cave and smoke curling out after. Korra's showed a knife cutting rope and rope tying a wound. Aeros's showed a sun setting and a sun rising, in that order.
Zhen frowned. "We sort them?"
"By intent," Lenia guessed.
"By harm," Toba said.
"By balance," Aeros said. "We keep what remains after we put things back."
He slid both images out of his bowl, pressed them gently to the lagoon's surface. The water accepted the sunset; it hesitated over the sunrise.
"Too soon," the judge said. "Let the night be night."
Aeros nodded and withdrew, waited three breaths, and offered the sunrise again. The lagoon smiled without moving.
Korra rolled her shoulders. "Knife, rope. Cut, tie. If I throw the knife away, we can't cut the rope to free a trapped man. If I keep the rope, I can bind a wound. But if I keep both, I'm greedy. And if I throw both away, I'm useless."
She threw the knife away and kept the rope. The bowl warmed under her hands.
Zhen swapped the soldier's spear for the farmer's stone. The lagoon liked that. Toba returned the fox's fire and kept the smoke because the cave he remembered—his memory, not the bowl's—needed the warning.
Lenia returned the ring and kept the child's toy—not because it was right, but because the child's hands in the image were shaking so badly it made the water ache. The judge met Lenia's eyes. Understood, that glance said.
Five bowls emptied at the same breath.
The shrine rose, smooth and wet, and the Water Banner unfurled like a sail, ready to take wind.
"Take it gently," the judge said. "Stare too long and you'll see something you don't want to."
"Like what?" Korra asked.
"Tomorrow," the judge said.
Aeros took the banner without staring and slipped it into his ring.
"Third," Zhen said, exhale shaky with relief. "We qualify."
"Not yet," Lenia said. "Home first."
They turned—and the lagoon answered with a shiver that wasn't wind.
Three stones away, a blue-cloaked attendant stood ankle-deep, head bowed in respect toward the judge. He held a small lacquer box in both hands.
The judge's face didn't change, but the water cooled.
"I didn't call you," she said.
"Forgive me, Herald," the attendant said softly. He opened the box. Inside, on velvet, lay a thin sliver of river jade incised with tiny characters that didn't look like any alphabet used in this world.
Zhen's breath caught. "Those sigils…"
Lenia's staff tipped a fraction. "Not local."
Aeros didn't move, but his skin prickled the way it had when the Ashlock ring woke.
The attendant didn't look up. "By order of the Colosseum Master," he said, "a harmonics probe must be seated at the final gate. The finale requires precise balance."
"Does it," the judge said. Her tone could have sanded stone.
"Yes, Herald." The attendant bowed deeper and set the jade sliver on the water. It didn't sink. It chose a path and drifted toward the far end of the lagoon where six capstans rose like knobs. The sliver slid into a notch that hadn't existed a heartbeat earlier and clicked.
The lagoon's reflections sharpened, as if someone had turned up the detail on every surface. The sound of the falls thinned to a finer wire. Zhen rubbed his arms. "Does anyone else feel… counted?"
Toba's fingers tightened on his guandao. "Don't like it."
Korra muttered, "Schemes."
The judge glanced at Aeros—just a flick—and then, to the attendant: "Tell the Master this water serves the trial, not the ledger."
"The ledger serves the trial," the attendant said, and smiled without warmth. "Balance must be recorded."
He bowed again and walked into the mist, his wake making no ripples at all.
They stood in the air for three breaths.
"What was that?" Korra asked.
"A probe," Zhen said. "But not just for currents." He wouldn't look at Aeros's ring as he said it.
Lenia's voice was mild. "Then we won't stand under the probes when we don't have to."
"Finale's full of them," Toba said. "If that was the first, there will be more."
Aeros tucked that away with Veyra's timing and the Ashlock's bite. Finale. Probes. Ledgers. He didn't like the way those words liked each other.
They made for home.