Chapter 27
The wind shifted.
On the morning of their match against Team Verdance, the training fields of Sanctum Astrae were transformed. Gone was the flat arena. In its place rose a living forest—dense, pulsating with mana, its branches swaying as if listening.
"This isn't just a summoning field," Lunaria said, voice low as the three of them stood at the edge of the newly grown wild. "They merged it with an ancestral grove."
Kaela narrowed her eyes. "Home field advantage. Great."
Astern said nothing. But the leaves rustled in a way that made his skin prickle. The grove… was watching him.
---
Team Verdance entered without fanfare. Three elves, clad in emerald robes woven from sylvan vines, stood ready. Their leader, a tall woman named Virelle, raised her hand. Nature responded.
The trees groaned. Roots shifted. Flowers bloomed and wilted in a heartbeat.
The match began.
The grove became a labyrinth.
Lunaria split from the group first, channeling frost through her palms. Vines hissed as they recoiled from her presence. Kaela followed close, carving a path forward with quick slashes of her daggers.
Astern moved slower.
The forest didn't attack him.
It observed.
"You're different," Virelle's voice echoed from the canopy. "I can feel it in the roots. You don't belong to this world… not entirely."
Astern closed his eyes.
The veil between realms shimmered.
A second later, a blast of umbral energy cracked through the underbrush, exposing one of Virelle's allies. Kaela was there in a blink, knocking them out cold.
But then the terrain shifted.
Thorns rose, towering, venom-laced. Lunaria was cut off.
Virelle appeared above them, riding a creature made of bark and spiritfire.
She raised her staff. "Let's see what the forest thinks of you now."
She summoned a beast from the elder wood—a six-legged wolf with golden eyes and breath like spores.
Astern stepped forward.
His aura surged—not just light or shadow, but something deeper. Something older.
The beast growled.
And bowed.
Virelle's eyes widened. "Impossible."
Astern raised a hand, and the summoned creature turned on its caster.
Virelle yielded.
The grove faded.
Victory: Dorm D.
---
Later, as they sat in the observation lounge overlooking the broken forest illusion, Lunaria leaned against the window.
"Summons don't bow to strangers," she said. "Unless they see something in you."
Kaela chuckled. "Or maybe he just has that much main character energy."
Astern didn't smile. His fingers still tingled from the contact.
In that moment of connection with the summoned beast, he had seen something—an echo.
Not of a forest.
But of a ruined planet.
A battlefield of ghouls.
And a crown waiting in silence.