Day 1 — West Wing
The West Wing forest began where the academy's cut stone lost its nerve. Pines shouldered one another until their boughs knitted the light into green cloth; the air carried a resin bite and the clean, metallic chill of an old stream. Wads moved through it as he had every morning since the summons—first at a run, then with a length of fallen branch across his shoulders for squats and lunges, then palms in the duff for a hundred slow push-ups that taught the mind to count without thinking.
When the ache warmed to steadiness, he stopped in a natural clearing where the needles underfoot softened sound and a shaft of sun laid one bright coin on the ground. He sat cross-legged on that coin until the heat sank through his uniform and into the muscles of his back.
Breath in. Count four. Hold. Count four. Breath out. Count six.
He let the forest say its pieces—the rattle of a dry cone, the stitch-stitch of a beetle in bark, a crow throwing its black voice between trunks—until even those small sounds blurred to a single steady hum. In the hum, he stepped inward.
Ren.
Like dropping into a pool that wasn't water so much as time. The edges of things softened. Sap mid-drip became a shining bead that reconsidered whether to fall. An ant lifting a dead moth's wing looked monumental, an entire war waged in miniature. He felt his heartbeat decouple from urgency and become a metronome, precise and impartial.
He counted—not seconds, but possibilities—testing how long he could keep the dilation without the headache that used to seam his vision with white. Ten heartbeats. Fifteen. Eighteen. The old limit was twenty-one before black dots rimmed his sight. Today he held through twenty-four, the pressure behind his eyes peaking and then… skimming off, like a hawk deciding not to strike.
He let Ren go with a breath that made the pine boughs seem to exhale too. The headache never arrived. A small, private victory. He didn't smile. He placed it on a shelf in his mind and reached for the next work.
Seer.
He didn't throw himself into that chasm; he slid a finger beneath the surface. A leaf had come loose somewhere above, a pale coin turning end over end. Wads fixed on it and felt the world splice into threads—thin silver filaments that fluttered from the leaf's edges, each leading to a different landing: a drift into a spider's web (three threads), a damp patch near a mushroom (five), the flat of a mossed stone (one).
He gripped the stone outcome—no, not gripped; selected, the way one selects a word and the sentence must make room. The leaf obeyed, as if a breeze had thought better of an old habit. It kissed the stone exactly where he had willed it.
Another threadwork: a pinecone wobbling on the brink of dropping. He chose its bounce—two tumbles, one spin, a stop against his boot. The cone complied and stopped with a neat tap that he felt through leather.
The strain came like heat from a forge. Subtle at first, then thick enough to taste: metal and rain. He withdrew. Practicing Seer was a knife's dance—too shallow and nothing strengthened, too deep and you cut into something you'd need later. He wiped a small trickle of blood from under one nostril with the back of his hand and folded the handkerchief cleanly before tucking it away. The forest took him back without comment.
He stood, rolled his shoulders, and moved through forms. Not anything codified; his body preferred a language of lines and pivots, exercises that asked muscles to remember and react without asking permission from thought. He ended as he began: seated, still, getting quiet enough to hear the shape of his own urgency. It sounded like a drum under a floor, distant and insistent. One week. Enough to sharpen. Not enough to make anything simple.
Day 2 — The Briefing
They were called to a private room most students would have sworn didn't exist. It crouched behind a tapestry of Saint Varo Ré binding a serpent, down a short hall that seemed shorter leaving than arriving. No windows; light came from hemispheres of frosted crystal sunk into the ceiling, each holding a moth-sized flame that did not smoke.
A chalkboard took one wall. Someone had already drawn a rough ring of the capital and the lands beyond. In the northern quadrant, a blot of darker chalk had been smudged and then circled. On a side table: a silver coffee urn, a tray of cups that clicked softly as heat breathed against porcelain, and a bowl of sugar that had clumped into meteorites.
Kaizer sat on the edge of the briefing table, ankles crossed, making the wood seem like a thing happy to support him. His gem lay dull at his throat; even his hair looked disciplined, the unruliness employed rather than indulged. Reiyell, Liora, Keiya, Klyden, Ashborne, and Wads took the seats that made sense—Reiyell front and center, Liora close enough to lean in, Keiya on an angle that gave her the room and the door, Ashborne a shadow at the edge of the light, Wads where he could see the board and everyone's hands, and Klyden… plopping down with a grin like this was a surprise party he'd planned himself.
Kaizer tapped the chalkboard with a knuckle. "All right, little stormfront. Ground first. Your target region is the northern skirt of the capital, beyond the last patrol road. Locals call this forest Forsaken." He underlined it. "Official maps sometimes pretend it doesn't exist. That's not ignorance. That's policy."
Liora raised her hand without raising it. "Why 'Forsaken'?"
Kaizer's mouth quirked. "Depends who you ask. Soldiers say because no army that marches into it comes out in the same number. Woodcutters say because it forgets you—compasses spin, paths double back, you walk two hours and end where you started. The old women with the nice tea say it's because the gods went there once, didn't like what looked back, and left without naming it. My favorite? The wind there drops names. Speak yours too often and it stops being yours." He shrugged. "More practically: old battlegrounds, too many graves, an iron seam under the soil that plays tricks with instruments, and rumor of deeper things. Do not whistle. Do not light three fires in a row. Do not leave bread out unless you want to count how many fingers eat it. Superstition? Maybe. Or maybe superstition is a map we draw when compasses fail."
Keiya's lashes narrowed. "We approach how?"
"You don't march into that like a parade," Kaizer said. "You go the way Tres goes: through common roads and common mouths. Three market towns north of the city—their names change with magistrates and marriages, but for now they're Rook's Run, Gallowsbright, and Bell Tine. Each is small enough to notice new faces and big enough to pretend not to. Couriers feed the forest from those mouths. You learn which lips stain red when they say they don't know what you mean."
Klyden's hand shot up, then he forgot it was up and blurted anyway. "Are you part of ZAO?" It wasn't suspicion—just bright, honest curiosity—as if he'd just realized the moon was a rock and needed to be told it was all right.
Kaizer blinked once, then grinned like someone had tossed him a roll he very much wanted to catch. "You'd be surprised to find out that I'm the vice president." He made an exaggeratedly modest face and put a finger under his chin as if posing for a heroic statue that would never be carved.
Klyden's blue eyes detonated. "No. No. That's—that's so cool. Do you get a badge? A secret knock? Do—"
"Idiots," Keiya sighed, not even bothering to disguise that she meant two people: the one who asked and the one who answered like that.
Kaizer chuckled and tipped her a little bow. "Back to our regularly scheduled criminal enterprise. You'll travel as a study detachment from the Academy's Natural Sciences track. Perfectly dull. You're doing a survey of iron content in northern soils. You'll have paperwork and a permit with the Grandmaster's stamp and my very handsome signature. If someone pushes harder than a constable needs to, you'll make note and smile. We want the pushers."
He chalked a small spider at the board's edge—a quick, sure sketch that made its legs look poised to move. "Watch for this mark—under hairlines, behind ears, at the nape. We've pulled it from three bodies now. It glows faintly when they draw too deep on Tres. If you see it, you're near the artery."
Reiyell's voice threaded the room without needing to be loud. "Rules of engagement?"
"Clean," Kaizer said. "We want lines to the source, not trophies. If you can, you follow, map, and call. If you must fight, you end it fast and quiet. No fires in Forsaken if you can help it. The wood there holds grudges."
Ashborne's red eyes flicked to the chalk spider, then to Kaizer, then away. He made no sound at all; Wads suspected the blade across his back was making plenty for him.
"And if we're compromised?" Wads asked.
Kaizer's smile thinned to business. "You say third bell and toss this." He slid a small capsule across the table. It looked like a glass bead filled with frost. "It'll crack and release a flare only ZAO watchers will see. You'll be pulled, one way or another. Preferably on your feet."
They went another fifteen minutes on signals, rendezvous, supply caches (two in Gallowsbright, one under the fourth plank from the east in a bridge that had no name), and names of people to avoid. Kaizer's voice did that trick good teachers' voices do—turning a heap of pieces into a picture.
"Questions?" he asked at last.
No one had any they were willing to say aloud. He nodded once, as if that had been an answer all its own. "Then we're done. Train, sleep, don't die in a stupid way before I've even sent you somewhere dangerous."
They broke. The door swallowed them one by one.
Noon — The Cafeteria
The cafeteria at midday was a living engine—heat off the stoves, tang of vinegar and pepper, bread breaking, a hundred voices knitting a tapestry of small dramas. Sunlight fell through the high windows in long bars that turned steam to cathedral incense. Trays clacked. Laughter stuck to the rafters.
Keiya ate alone at a corner table she had slowly colonized over the term—knife-and-fork neat, posture a study in lines, a bottle of water set to the right as if measured with a ruler. A bowl of spiced lentils, a wedge of flatbread, a salad so green it looked like it had invented the color.
Klyden arrived with the subtlety of a summer parade, tray piled—stew, two breads, something that had been a cake and was now structural history. He plunked it down across from her and sat like gravity had picked that chair. Keiya didn't look up immediately—she finished the bite she was on, set her fork down, dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin.
Then she raised her eyes. "I am starting to suspect you believe this chair is your property."
"I'm starting to suspect you are fond of me, because you haven't burned me for it," Klyden said, tearing bread with hands that had punched dragonfire and still thought butter was more interesting. His blue eyes were bright with their usual shameless sun.
Her mouth moved—something not quite a smile, not quite a scowl. "You bring weather into a room."
"And you bring matches," he said. "We're a set."
She took a drink of water to keep from answering that one. Across the room, two second-years elbowed each other and glanced over; Keiya's gaze slid to them and they remembered they had soup to be fascinated by.
"You were the Vice President's idiot five minutes ago," she said, returning to her lentils.
"Vice President! Did you see that? Our Kaizer! I mean, I knew he was… I don't know, important. But vice president." He said it like a child testing a new sweet's name. "Do you think he gets, like, a secret tea? With little pastries? And—"
"Gods," Keiya muttered, "he gets a migraine."
Klyden laughed, recovered, and leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin on fists. "He said Natural Sciences cover. Soil iron. I'm going to be the best fake dirt student you've ever seen."
"You have never been the best at anything fake," Keiya said dryly. "Your talent is… painfully genuine."
He blinked. "Was that… a compliment? Did you just—huh. Warmth detected. Mark this day."
She tore a piece of flatbread so precisely it could have been measured. "Don't grow sentimental. It looks wrong on you."
He chewed, swallowed, and let the room's noise wash over his next thought. When he spoke again, the clown had put away one cymbal. "You think the forest is really like that? Names slipping. Compasses spinning."
"I think superstition is a language for pattern," Keiya said. "And patterns kill and save with equal indifference to how many jokes you tell on the way in."
He nodded, surprisingly fast. "So… learn the language."
She looked at him. "Yes."
A pause, then: "Teach me one of your runes," he blurted. "Not the dangerous ones. I promise not to set the table on fire. Much."
Her brows lifted. "Why?"
"Because you write with fire," he said simply, "and sometimes I feel like I'm just… punching it. And because if I understand even a little of how you think fire thinks, maybe I won't be the idiot you keep saying I am."
The cafeteria's warmth shifted around them, like a crowd stepping back a half-step to give someone room. Keiya set her fork down fully now and folded her hands.
"Fine," she said, and Klyden tried not to fist-pump and failed quietly. "You will learn one glyph. The simplest binding: Sael. It knots motion. Does not hold strength, only slows it, like pushing through water. You will not draw it on people without cause. You will not draw it on yourself."
"Got it. Not on me. Not on Liora. Especially not on Wads. Definitely never on Ashborne. He'd… cut it."
"He would," Keiya agreed. "Listen. Three strokes. One: a vertical line—think clear intention. Two: a short hook to the right at the base—catch. Three: a circle that does not touch the line—field. If the circle touches the line, it becomes Saar, and that does not bind; it bursts."
Klyden swallowed, suddenly respectful. "Okay. Clear, catch, field. No touching. Got it."
She looked at his hands, large and sure. "Your problem will be pressure. You punch. You will press too hard and make Saar without meaning. So you will practice with breath. One breath per stroke. If your breath is ragged, your rune will be ragged."
He glanced around, found the condensation ring his water had left, and—very seriously—drew Sael with one fingertip: line (exhale), hook (inhale), circle (slow exhale). The water beaded along his path and for a second the glyph lay there, perfect as if cut in glass. The air above the table wavered, just a hair, and a smear of steam drifting from someone's soup slowed when it crossed the invisible circle.
Klyden's grin came like sun through shutters. "Did I—?"
"Do not look so pleased with yourself," Keiya said, but the corner of her mouth betrayed her. "Do it again. Ten times. Then forget it until I say otherwise."
He obeyed, cheeks furrowed with concentration, the big body suddenly very careful. Around the fifth, he got overexcited and his circle brushed the line. The water glyph popped with a soft tsk, a crumb skittered off a plate two tables down, and a filament of heat rose like a candle's sigh.
Keiya's hand snapped out, two fingers slicing the air. The rising heat flattened, obedient. She didn't even look away from him to do it.
"Too much pressure," she said mildly.
"Right. Right." He tried again, softer. The sixth was clean. By the tenth, his breaths had found a rhythm. He leaned back, a little flushed, proud in a way even he wouldn't boast about.
"Thank you," he said, and the word had none of his usual lacquer. "I won't waste it."
"I know," Keiya said, too quickly for it to be a performance. She glanced away as if the windows had said something. "And for Sunflare—stop throwing your shoulder. Your hips set your shield. If the base is crooked, the storm gets in."
He blinked, then nodded slowly, replaying a dozen blocks in his head and seeing, with a small horror, how many had been saved by luck and muscle. "Right. Hips. Base. Storm stays out."
"And your Dawnbreaker," she added, "is not a hammer. It is a line. Draw it. Do not swing it. You will know you are doing it correctly when it feels… easy."
He laughed. "Nothing about that punch is easy."
"Then you have never done it correctly."
For a heartbeat, their eyes held. The room, the tables, the students-thick world—they all seemed to fade to a lower volume. He saw what others missed under Keiya's edges: not just fire, but a patience that could wait through winter. She saw under Klyden's jokes a spine nobody had taught him to be ashamed of.
"Why do you sit here alone?" he asked, very softly.
"I don't," she said, and took another bite of lentils.
He smiled into his water. "Right. Of course you don't."
They finished eating—he in a flurry; she with clean, exact motions. When they stood, Klyden reached for his tray and then paused. "Keiya."
"What."
"If I die in Forsaken, you can have my bread tokens."
She lifted an eyebrow. "You will not die. And your bread tokens are counterfeit."
"Not all of them." He flashed a roll from somewhere it had no right to be and she—actually, truly—laughed. Just once. A small, startled sound, as if the air had slipped and revealed it beneath.
He looked like he'd been told a secret he'd keep better than any rune.
"Train," she said, recovering. "Then sleep. The forest will not care how charming you were at lunch."
He saluted with the roll. "Yes, Vice-President's Sister."
"Stop calling me that."
"Can't. It's the law."
She shook her head and moved through the crowded aisle like smoke through lattice. He watched her go a beat too long, then shouldered his tray and headed for the yard, breathing in three strokes: clear, catch, field.
Somewhere in the West Wing forest, a leaf had already begun to fall to the exact stone Wads would choose for it tomorrow.