Summer time. For most people, those words meant holidays, long afternoons, and a brief escape from responsibility. For everyone in the Academy, however, they carried a very different meaning. Summer meant the end of year exams, and with them came the kind of pressure that settled over the grounds like a weight no one could quite shake off. It was worse still for Professor Slaine's class. Every student under his supervision was a combatant type Flame Borne, and so their exams were not built around quiet study, careful theory, or delicate displays of control. Their exams were combat. Pure and simple.
That was what made the season feel almost cruelly ironic. In other classes, the students under teachers like Sarrah Grey or Fendal Jurres would spend their examination days proving academic discipline, mental endurance, and precision with flame. They might be asked to shape flaming statues, summon Avatars, or sit through written tests that measured how well their minds could hold steady under strain. Difficult, certainly, but clean. Controlled. Civilised, in comparison. To the students under Slaine, it always seemed as though the world had a sense of humour, and that humour had left them with the short end of the stick.
The first three years at the Academy had been different. Back then, the end of year exams had felt almost ceremonial. A chance to show off a few bright, flashy techniques while parents watched from the stands and teachers nodded along with measured approval. There had been danger, of course, or at least the suggestion of it, but it had been wrapped in applause and encouragement. Then time did what it always did. The boys and girls grew older. The cheers became quieter. Expectations took shape. Responsibility followed close behind.
They were no longer children performing for admiring families. They were the next generation of Flame Bornes in the country, and for combatant types, that meant something far heavier than grades. It meant they might become soldiers. The army was not a guaranteed path for everyone in Slaine's class, but it was the one most of them reached for all the same. It promised status, security, and a purpose that had been placed before them since they were old enough to understand what their flames could do.
The army offered remarkable benefits for Flame Bornes. Cur's mother and father were living proof of that. Exquisite pay, housing fully provided by the Monarchy, and exclusive access to certain knowledge, materials, and regions were only part of what service could bring. Even a commoner, if they had enough dedication and will, could rise to become one of the most important people in the kingdom. All of it came from the King's Rose philosophy of war: "It is best to land one decisive blow rather than land ten good ones." Since Flamberge's legacy and his ascension to the throne, that idea had spread far beyond the battlefield. It had become a rule people carried into their daily lives. Why have ten people do something well, when one could do it perfectly?
It was with this mindset that Cur, Markus, and Calliarna found themselves standing beneath the weight of that day. Not simply another exam day, and not quite a battlefield either, though it carried something from both. Today they were expected to prove, in front of teachers, classmates, and whatever standards the Academy had quietly set for them, that they were worthy of the future being offered. Worthy of the benefits, the prestige, and the opportunities that so many Flame Bornes spent their lives reaching toward.
Beyond the safe comfort of Alexsandria, the human kingdom was not truly safe at all. It only looked that way from behind walls, roads, patrol routes, and all the careful systems people had built to convince themselves otherwise. Far from the heart of the kingdom, monsters still roamed the land. They were the old problem. The ugly, stubborn truth that had followed humanity for hundreds of years, long before Azar ever took the throne. They had been there in the stories of frightened villages, in the records of failed excursions, and in the warnings every child eventually learned to take seriously. Most people believed they would remain there until the last star died out.
Four hundred years of documented army excursions had changed that truth, but only slowly. Inch by inch, generation by generation, the monsters had been driven back from the places where people lived. Not defeated. Never defeated. Merely forced into great, scattered pockets of concentration, each one large enough to matter and dangerous enough to be feared. The kingdom had learned to live around them, to mark them, to watch them, and to make sure that another War for Survival could never rise from their shadows again.
In the present day, those pockets served a different purpose as well. They were still wounds in the map, still places where ordinary citizens did not go, but to the kingdom they had become something useful. Researchers studied them. Soldiers trained near them. Commanders measured young Flame Bornes against the dangers that waited there. Documentation, research, and practice grounds all at once. Evil, contained just enough to be used, but never enough to be forgotten.
It was with all of this hanging over them that Slaine's class set out. Fourteen students rode at the centre of the formation, with six teachers spread among them, fourteen army personnel keeping the edges secure, and a handful of researchers and medical teams following close enough to be useful, but far enough back not to get in the way. In an ordinary year, the group would not have needed to be so large. A few soldiers. A few staff. Enough to keep order and make sure no student died doing something foolish. But this was not an ordinary year, and everyone knew it. This year had drawn eyes from places that did not usually bother looking at Academy exams. Careful eyes. Interested eyes. The grandson of the Commander of the Second Legion, the daughter of the infamous Dark Maiden, and the unexpected son of Evelyn and Adurn Ynha-El were all walking in the same class. More than that, they were walking together. Cur, Markus, and Calliarna had not simply been placed in the same group by chance. Somewhere along the way, they had become inseparable, and that made people pay attention.
Among the older generations, the news had not passed quietly. When word first reached the higher circles that those three young Flame Bornes would share a class, speculation moved faster than any official announcement could contain. It passed through military offices, noble households, Academy staff rooms, and most of all through the Court of War, where coincidence was rarely treated as coincidence for long. The children and heirs of some of the most powerful, infamous, and influential people in the kingdom were not only studying together. They were laughing together, training together, arguing together, and standing close enough that people had begun to imagine what the future might look like if they stayed that way. If Cur, Markus, and Calliarna rose into the positions their parents, guardians, and bloodlines had prepared around them, then politics, excursions, and even war itself could one day move with frightening efficiency. It would mean more than friendship. It would mean a joining of ranks, histories, and status that many found promising, and others found deeply unsettling.
As the carriages moved along the paved road, the sound of wooden wheels striking stone rose slowly through the cabin. It began as a faint rhythm beneath the floorboards, dull and steady, then grew sharper whenever the road turned uneven. Inside that enclosed space sat Cur, Markus, Calliarna, and a single military officer. The cabin itself was built to hold eight people, and in most years it would have done exactly that, packed tight with restless students, nervous laughter, and far too many elbows. This year, however, the class was smaller than usual. The extra space made the carriage feel less crowded, but not more comfortable. If anything, it only gave the silence more room to settle.
Markus and Calliarna sat on the right side of the cabin, placed opposite one another by the window. Calliarna kept her eyes closed, her posture straight, her hands composed, graceful in the same effortless way she always seemed to be. Only the faint tension around her mouth suggested that the long and dreadful carriage ride had already tested her patience. She was waiting for it to end. Waiting for the doors to open, for the swaying to stop, and for the honest certainty of solid ground beneath her feet again. Markus, by contrast, looked as though he would have leaned halfway out of the window if decorum had allowed it. He stared through the glass with open interest, taking in every passing view with that bright, infuriatingly good-looking gleam in his eyes.
Cur and the officer sat on the left side, nearest the door that led in and out of the carriage. The officer occupied his seat with the patience of someone trained not to fidget. He said nothing. His expression did not shift. Only his eyes moved, passing from one student to the next with quiet, practised attention, as though he had been ordered not merely to accompany them, but to measure them. Cur, meanwhile, had claimed the corner for himself. He leaned back with his right hand propping up his head, while his left held open the book he had chosen to bring for the journey. It was not the first book he had opened since they left, nor, judging by the small stack beside him, would it be the last.
At a glance, it might have seemed like coincidence that the three of them had been placed in the same carriage. It was not. Higher powers had arranged it that way, quietly and with purpose, hoping that today would offer more than a simple examination. They wanted to watch. To compare. To see what the future generation might become when placed close enough together for sparks to show. The ride, however, did not care for politics, expectation, or the curiosity of people far above them. It was long. Painfully long. And no matter how many books Cur had brought, no matter how much interest Markus found in the passing countryside, and no matter how still Calliarna managed to remain, boredom eventually entered the cabin and made itself comfortable among them.
"Ugh. If we don't come to a stop soon, I might actually blow this carriage wide open."
Markus said it aloud with no real attempt to hide his misery. He had sunk low into his seat at some point during the last hour, one shoulder pressed against the carriage wall, one leg stretched out farther than manners allowed. The boredom had not merely settled over him now. It had claimed him entirely.
The military officer heard the threat, mild as it was, and for the first time in over three hours, moved.
It was a small movement. Barely anything at all. A slight turn of the head, a narrowing of the eyes, the faintest acknowledgement that he had, in fact, been listening. Markus noticed at once. After hours of silence, even that much was enough to look like an invitation.
"So, it wasn't a statue after all."
The officer looked at him properly then. For a moment, he seemed to consider whether Markus had truly chosen to speak to him, or whether the boy was simply amusing himself with the nearest available target. Then he let out a quiet breath, small enough that it might have been mistaken for patience.
"Is there something you wish of me, Lord Heldew?"
"Lord Heldew?"
Markus repeated the title as though it belonged to someone seated in an entirely different carriage.
"Lord Heldew is my grandfather," he said, lifting himself slightly from his slouch. "You don't have to treat me like that. We're all students in here besides you."
"I'm afraid that is not possible," the officer replied. "As a potential future heir to the Heldew family, my manners must remain as if I were speaking to the Commander of the Second Legion himself, sir."
"Oh. Is that so?"
Markus turned away from him almost immediately. Whatever amusement he had hoped to pull from the conversation died before it had a chance to grow. The man was not cold exactly, nor rude, nor even unpleasant. He was simply impossible. A wall dressed in armour and manners. Markus let his head fall back against the carriage and searched, with renewed desperation, for something else to occupy him.
That was when his gaze drifted to Calliarna. At first, nothing seemed wrong. She was still seated upright, still composed, still wearing the graceful stillness that usually made her look untouched by ordinary discomfort. But the longer Markus looked, the less convincing it became. Her fingers had tightened over the fabric of her skirt. A faint tremor ran through one shoulder. Her breathing had grown careful, as though every inhale had to be negotiated before it was allowed in.
"Hey, Calli. You doing okay?"
Calliarna opened her eyes slowly. That alone was enough to answer him. The elegance had not vanished, not completely, but it had thinned into something fragile. Her face had lost colour, and there was a strained, fixed quality to her expression that made Markus sit up properly for the first time in what felt like hours.
"H-Hey, what's with that look?"
He asked it carefully, as though there was still a chance the answer might somehow be his fault.
"…sick."
The word came out so low that the carriage seemed almost to swallow it.
Markus leaned closer, confusion pulling at his brow.
"What was that?"
"…going to be sick."
"Huh?"
Calliarna's control finally broke.
"I'm going to be sick!"
Markus recoiled so fast his shoulder struck the side of the carriage. For one useless second he only stared at her, eyes wide, as though the problem had presented itself in a language he did not understand. Then panic caught up with him. He looked from Calliarna, to the floor, to the seats, to Cur's books, and then back again, searching desperately for anything that might serve as a container and finding absolutely nothing suitable.
The officer, in contrast, moved with the unhurried composure of a man who had seen far worse problems inside far worse vehicles. He reached for the carriage door, opened it against the moving air, and spoke to the driver outside in a voice that did not rise above politeness.
"Would you please stop for a minute?"
The driver gave no reply. He simply drew back on the reins, and the carriage began to slow. The change was subtle at first, a slight easing in the rhythm of the wheels, then a heavier pull as the horses resisted the interruption. At last, the carriage came to a full stop.
Calliarna did not wait for permission. The moment the door was clear, she rose and hurried outside, her usual concern for appearance abandoned somewhere between dignity and survival. For one terrible instant, she thought the fresh air would be what finally pushed her over the edge. Instead, it steadied her. Cool air struck her face, filled her lungs, and loosened something tight and miserable in her chest. She bent forward slightly, one hand pressed over her heart, drawing in exaggerated breaths until colour slowly began to return to her cheeks.
The officer stepped down after her and placed his left hand lightly against her back.
"Are you all right, Lady Uls?"
Between breaths, Calliarna looked at him properly for the first time.
He wore the kingdom's signature white and red armour, polished but not ornamental. The sort of armour meant to be recognised from a distance and respected up close. At first glance, his young face might have made him seem like an ordinary escort, someone placed with the students because he was available rather than important. But the golden stars set across his chest and shoulder told a different story, as did the blue ribbons running between them. He was higher ranking than he looked. Much higher, perhaps, than any of them had bothered to notice while trapped inside the carriage.
Mahogany hair, parted neatly down the middle, rested against his head and fell just low enough to cover half his ears. His eyes were a striking shade of pink, sharp without being harsh, and his brows were carefully kept. A slim, recently shaved jawline framed his face, and a single mole sat above his left cheek, small but oddly memorable now that she had noticed it.
Calliarna gathered herself beneath his attention. She drew in one final breath, slower than the others, and managed a small, grateful smile.
"Yes. Thank you."
A sound reached them before the rider did. Hooves struck the road behind the carriage in a quick, controlled rhythm, growing louder with each passing second until Calliarna turned her head slightly toward it. The officer did not turn at once. He only lifted his gaze, calm and measured, as though he had already expected someone to come checking on them.
A horse drew up beside the carriage a moment later. On its back sat another soldier, dressed in the same white and red armour as the officer standing beside Calliarna. His armour, however, carried fewer marks of rank and far less decoration. His helm remained fixed over his head, leaving little of his face visible, and one hand rested close to his weapon as he brought the horse to a stop.
"Is everything all right? Why have we stopped?"
There was genuine concern in his voice, but it came sharpened by training. He had asked a question, yet his posture had already prepared for an answer he might need to fight.
"Everything is fine, soldier. A simple case of motion sickness. We will be departing soon enough."
The officer replied without haste. His tone did not dismiss the concern, but it did settle it. One sentence was enough to make the matter smaller, more ordinary, and safely beneath alarm.
The mounted soldier looked first to the officer's face, then to the markings on his armour, as if confirming the weight behind the answer. Only after that did his gaze move to Calliarna, who was still bent slightly forward, one hand near her chest as she continued to steady her breathing. Whatever worry remained in him seemed to ease. He straightened in the saddle, brought one fist sharply against the armour over his heart, and bowed his head.
"Yes, my lord."
With a light tug of the reins, the soldier turned his horse away from the carriage. The animal shifted beneath him, hooves scraping briefly over the road before it found its pace again. Then rider and mount moved back down the line, returning to their position as quickly and quietly as they had come.
Cur watched all of it from the carriage doorway. Or, at least, his body did. He remained half-leaning against the inner corner, one shoulder pressed to the wood, his head angled just enough that anyone looking in from outside might have assumed he had slept through the entire disruption. It would have been an easy mistake to make. His books lay finished beside him, the carriage had grown dull beyond mercy, and Cur had not offered a single comment since Calliarna had rushed outside. But sleep had nothing to do with his silence.
While the others dealt with the small misery of the carriage ride, Cur had slipped inward instead, retreating to the bright void he shared with Era. To anyone else, it might have seemed selfish that he alone could escape the swaying, the boredom, and the enclosed heat of the cabin. Perhaps it was. But there had been little else for him to do, and after everything that had happened to his friends only a few months before, there was more than enough for him and Era to discuss. Some conversations could not be held aloud. Some needed quiet. Some needed distance from the world, even if that distance only existed behind his eyes.
Calliarna and the officer returned to the cabin a short while later. She climbed in first, slower than before, one hand briefly touching the frame of the door as if to reassure herself that the ground had not begun moving again without warning. The officer followed after her and paused at the threshold, casting one measured glance over the students inside before he reached back and gave the driver a quiet signal to continue.
---
After another hour or so, the rhythm of the journey began to change. The carriages, which had spent most of the afternoon groaning over stone and earth, slowed one by one until the long procession finally came to a standstill. For a moment, no one moved. The only sounds were the soft huffing of horses, the faint creak of harnesses, and the distant murmur of soldiers calling quiet instructions down the line. Then, gradually, doors began to open. One carriage after another released its passengers into the open air, and students, teachers, soldiers, researchers, and medical staff stepped down onto the grassland beneath them, the whole field washed in the low gold of the setting sun.
From their carriage, the officer stepped out first. He did so with the same quiet precision he had shown throughout the ride, boots finding the ground as though he had measured the distance before moving. Calliarna followed after him, slower and far less proudly than she might have preferred. She looked better than she had during the stop, and the colour had mostly returned to her face, but the lingering unease had not entirely left her. As soon as her feet touched the grass, she swayed just enough for Markus to notice.
"You really hate these things, huh?"
Markus said it from just behind her, wearing the kind of grin that had never once helped him make a situation better. He leaned slightly to one side so he could see her face, clearly pleased with himself for finding humour in someone else's suffering.
Calliarna paused. For half a second, she did not move at all. Then, as though deciding that enduring the carriage had already been insult enough, she turned just enough for her left hand to move. The strike was quick, neat, and almost elegant. A perfect uppercut drove into Markus's stomach before he had the sense to step back, and the grin vanished from his face with admirable speed.
"Ah! I've been hit! Call the healers!"
Markus folded dramatically toward the ground, one hand pressed to his stomach as though he had been mortally wounded. Cur chose that exact moment to leave the carriage. He stepped down carefully, took one look at Markus sprawled near the wheel, and then placed his foot neatly beside him rather than offering so much as a word of concern. His expression did not change. Not even slightly.
"Thanks, Cur. I'll be sure to remember that!"
"Relax. You were pretending anyway."
Cur said it without looking back. His attention had already moved beyond Markus, beyond the carriage, and onto the land spread out before them. The grass rolled gently away from the road, bending beneath the evening breeze, each blade catching a thin line of sunset along its edge. In the distance, the rest of the procession continued to unpack itself into the field, figures moving in small clusters beneath the fading light. Whatever humour remained between them softened there, beneath the open sky, as the reality of where they had arrived began to settle in.
That was when the three of them noticed what waited ahead. A short distance beyond the front of the carriages, past the soldiers already spreading into position, stood a great mass of trees. At first, it might have been mistaken for any ordinary forest seen from far away, dark with evening shade and pressed close beneath the sinking light. But the longer they looked, the less ordinary it became. The trees grew too tightly together, their trunks packed so close that the forest line looked less like the beginning of a woodland and more like a wall raised against the world. Still, it was not the sight of it that unsettled them most. It was the air that came from it. A pressure. A warning. Something old and instinctive that moved beneath the skin before thought could name it. Whatever lay beyond that treeline was not meant to be entered lightly. Cur stared at it in silence, the humour from only moments before gone from his face.
The feeling sat strangely in him. Cur had read plenty about the monsters that had once pushed the kingdom to the edge of ruin. He knew the names given to them in old military accounts, the casualty numbers recorded in history texts, and the stories adults used when they wanted children to understand why certain places were never to be treated as games. He had thought he understood the fear those stories were meant to carry. Standing there, however, without seeing a single monster, without hearing a single growl or movement from between the trees, he realised that understanding had only ever been theoretical. This was different. The presence beyond the forest line pressed against him like a truth too large to ignore. It felt less like a place on a map and more like an open wound in the earth, raw and badly sealed, with something beneath it still trying to breathe.
The moment did not last. A sharp shout from one of the teachers cut across the field, snapping the students' attention away from the forest before the silence could settle too deeply.
Under the teachers' direction, the students gathered in a rough cluster at the centre of the stopped procession. Around them, the carriages had already begun to form a wide circle, each one set into place to mark the outer shape of the temporary camp. The arrangement was practical, but there was something defensive about it too. Soldiers moved between the gaps, measuring distances, checking sightlines, and laying out the first perimeter markers. Researchers carried equipment toward the areas assigned to them, while the medical teams began unfolding canvas, crates, and supplies with practised efficiency. Piece by piece, the open grassland became something organised. Watch posts. Research tents. Medical tents. A place for rations. A place for rest. A camp built not for comfort, but for survival close to danger.
While everyone else moved with clear purpose, the students were left standing together in front of their teachers, watching the camp take shape around them. Some tried to look bored. Others stared too openly at the forest and then quickly looked away, as though afraid someone might notice. Cur, Markus, and Calliarna stood side by side near the front of the group, the earlier teasing between them now quiet beneath the weight of where they were. Then Professor Slaine stepped forward. He did not need to raise his hand for attention. The moment he moved to the centre, the students turned toward him.
"Alright, listen up," Slaine called. His voice carried easily across the grass, sharp enough to cut through the movement of soldiers and the creak of canvas being raised. "This is Lament Forest, home to more than one manner of fiend. We have soldiers with us, and we will be camping a safe distance from the treeline, but do not mistake that for safety. You are not to let your guard down. Not tonight, not tomorrow, and not for as long as we remain here."
He let the words hang for a moment, long enough for several students to glance toward the forest again despite themselves. Slaine watched them do it and did not soften his expression. "As you know, you are here for your end of year exams. The details of those exams will be explained tomorrow. For now, you will help the staff establish camp. The faster that is done, the faster we eat, and the fewer excuses I have to listen to."
His gaze moved across the group. "Boys, you will assist the soldiers with any manual labour they require. Tents, rations, equipment, perimeter supports. If they tell you to lift something, lift it. Girls, you will assist the researchers and medical teams with their preparations. Supplies, records, instruments, bedding, whatever they ask of you. Once the camp is set, we can eat. Until then, get to work."
A tired, deeply unenthusiastic cheer rose from the small crowd of students. It was less a show of spirit than a collective admission that complaining would not help them. One by one, they began to split apart, drifting toward the soldiers, researchers, and medical staff who had already started working. Within moments, the class that had arrived as passengers was folded into the labour of the camp, carrying canvas, hauling crates, and doing exactly as they had been told.
---
A short while later, the last colour of sunset had vanished from the horizon. The sun itself was gone, leaving the grassland beneath a quieter kind of light. Above the camp, the two moons had risen into the darkening sky, pale and immense, their white glow spilling over the tents, the carriages, and the distant edge of Lament Forest. It was beautiful in the way distant things often were. Comforting, if one looked only at the light. Less comforting, perhaps, if one thought too long about the darkness around it. The moons had been known by many names throughout the kingdom, but the oldest and most common was the Eyes of the Maker. People said they hung at the perfect distance from the world, too evenly placed to be chance, too watchful to feel like ordinary celestial bodies. From that belief came a hundred old stories, each one a little different from the last, and among them was a children's tale told in hushed voices before bed. If a child behaved poorly after nightfall, if they crept where they should not creep or lied when they thought no one could hear, then their parents might not see them. The Maker, however, always would. His eyes were open in the sky, ever watching over his creations.
A campfire had been raised at the centre of the camp before the last of the work was finished. By the time Cur and Markus returned with their bowls, the flames were already steady, low and orange, breathing warmth into the circle of trampled grass around them. A few teachers and staff had claimed one side of the fire for cooking, if it could truly be called cooking. Pots hung over the heat. Steam rose from them in pale, tired threads. The smell was not unpleasant exactly, but it carried none of the richness Cur had grown used to within the Academy walls. No roasted spices. No sweet sauces. No fresh bread set out in neat baskets. Only boiled vegetables, simple simmered meat, and the faint wooden scent of the cheap bowls they had been given.
Cur lowered himself onto one of the nearby rocks and held the bowl in both hands for a moment, letting the heat press into his palms. Across from him, Markus sat with far less ceremony, dropping down with a sigh as though the rock had personally offended him. Neither of them spoke at first. They watched the fire move, listened to the soft scrape of spoons and forks from the other students scattered around the camp, and let the evening settle over them in layers. Beyond the ring of carriages and tents, Lament Forest remained a dark mass beneath the moonlight. Even with soldiers between them and the trees, Cur found it difficult not to feel its presence.
He took a careful bite. The vegetables were soft enough to fall apart without effort, and the meat had been cooked until it surrendered every trace of ambition. It was food made with survival in mind. Food meant to fill a stomach and keep a body moving. Nothing more. Cur understood that well enough, and he had no intention of complaining. This, too, was part of the lesson. The Academy restaurant, with its polished plates and impossible desserts, belonged to another world for the next few days.
Markus, however, had never been especially devoted to suffering in silence. He stared down into his bowl as if hoping it might improve beneath the force of his disappointment.
"The least they could've done is use salt…"
He muttered it with the weary bitterness of a man betrayed by the kingdom itself, then let his fork fall back into the bowl with a dull little clack.
Cur glanced at him, then at the bowl, and a quiet laugh escaped before he could stop it.
"I think salt would imply luxury. I don't think that's the idea they're going for right now."
Markus considered that for a moment. The fire shifted between them, sending a brief flare of light across his face and catching the amused frustration in his eyes.
"Honestly… they probably would have made a better meal just by burning the ingredients."
Cur laughed properly then, the sound breaking out of him before he could make it small. Markus joined him a second later, not because the joke was particularly clever, but because exhaustion had made it feel like the funniest thing either of them had heard all day. For a little while, that was enough. The fire cracked softly. The camp moved around them in quiet, practical rhythms. Somewhere nearby, a teacher gave a low instruction, and somewhere farther off, a horse stamped at the ground.
Despite all their complaints, they ate. Slowly, and without enthusiasm, but they ate. Neither boy needed to say why. Tomorrow waited beyond the night, and whatever shape the exam took, it would not care whether they had found dinner disappointing. Going into it hungry would be foolish. Worse than foolish, perhaps, when the forest beyond the camp seemed to watch them with every dark gap between its trees.
After the bowls had been emptied and set aside, neither of them rose at once. Cur leaned back against the rock face, letting the cool stone press through his shirt. Markus did the same beside him, stretching his legs toward the fire and tilting his head up toward the sky. The two moons hung above the camp like pale coins, bright enough to silver the edges of the tents and turn the grass into something almost unreal. For a moment, the day's discomforts drifted a little farther away.
Calliarna joined them not long after. She approached from behind, her steps light enough that Markus did not notice at first. Cur did. He turned his head slowly, just enough to meet her gaze over his shoulder, and found her looking far more composed than she had during the carriage ride. A little tired, perhaps, but herself again.
She spoke before he could.
"How was your gruel?"
She came around the side of the rock and sat down between them without waiting for an invitation, folding herself into the space as though it had always been hers.
Markus gave the empty bowl a mournful glance.
"Honestly… gruel may have actually been better."
"Right?" Calliarna asked, and this time there was a smile on her face, small but genuine.
The three of them sat like that for a while, close enough that their shoulders almost touched, watching the fire without really watching it. Around them, the camp had begun to quiet. Students who had complained loudly during the work now spoke in lower voices. Soldiers moved along the edge of the perimeter with deliberate steps, their armour catching moonlight in brief flashes. Beyond them, the forest remained still.
Calliarna was the one who finally broke the silence.
"You guys ready for tomorrow?"
Markus leaned his head back against the rock with a faint groan, but Cur did not answer immediately. His eyes remained on the fire. A thin piece of wood collapsed inward, sending sparks up into the dark. He watched them rise, burn bright for a breath, and vanish.
"As ready as we can be," Cur said at last. "We don't know what we're facing, or what sort of test it's going to be."
The answer was honest, and because it was honest, none of them seemed to know what to do with it for a moment. Markus stopped shifting. Calliarna's smile faded into something gentler. The fire filled the space between them.
"Will you be alright?" Calliarna asked, turning toward Cur.
Cur looked back at her. There was no accusation in her face, no demand for bravery, only concern held carefully enough that it did not feel like pity. That made it harder to answer quickly.
"I'll be fine," he said. Then, after a small pause, he added, "Thanks for worrying."
It might have stayed there, quiet and serious, if Markus had been anyone other than Markus. He turned his head toward Calliarna, and Cur saw the grin forming before the question even arrived.
"Anyway, enough about that… Calli, did I get a hint of a crush from you earlier with the officer?"
"Huh!?"
Markus had clearly expected colour to rise in her cheeks, or for her to turn away, or for some delicate confession to stumble into the open. Instead, Calliarna looked at him with a cold, steady stare that made the fire seem warmer by comparison. His grin weakened at once. Then it disappeared entirely.
"Ahh…" he said, suddenly far less confident. "I guess I imagined it."
Cur chuckled under his breath, unable to help himself. Calliarna turned that same stare on him, though with less force behind it.
"Cur, why do you allow him to be like this?" she asked, as if Cur had personally raised Markus and failed somewhere along the way.
For a heartbeat, none of them moved. Calliarna held her stare on Cur as if expecting him to provide some reasonable answer, and Cur tried, truly tried, to gather one. But the effort lasted only as long as Markus's wounded expression. Then Cur broke first. A laugh slipped out of him, small at the start, then fuller when Markus, unable to help himself, gave in beside him. Calliarna resisted longer than either of them, her mouth pressed into a firm line, her dignity held in place by sheer will. But even that could not survive the sound of the two of them laughing like fools at the edge of a haunted forest. Her shoulders loosened, her expression cracked, and soon she was laughing too. There was no grand reason for it. Nothing particularly clever had been said. They were tired, sore, and fed on something that had only barely deserved to be called dinner. The carriage ride still lingered in their bones, the day's labour sat heavy in their arms, and tomorrow waited in the dark beyond the firelight.
Perhaps that was why the laughter came so easily. For a little while, it let them set all of it down.