The lower training hall felt too small for all of them now.
Not physically.
Wrong.
Like the room had been built for ordinary soldiers and no longer knew what to do with the things standing inside it.
Kael leaned against the iron railing at the edge of the combat floor while Sen paced in a tight circle below, muttering to himself and writing furiously across three separate pages at once. Toren followed him like a starved dog watching a butcher.
"Don't hover," Sen snapped.
"I'm not hovering. I'm advancing supportively."
"You are breathing on my ink."
Across the room, Bram was lifting one of the disabled training constructs by the torso with a single hand.
He stared at it, then at his hand, then back at the twisted steel frame.
"I really didn't mean to do that."
Sera, perched on a crate near the wall, snorted. "You say that like it's the construct's fault for being weak."
"It was military grade."
"It was military grade before you turned into a siege engine."
Bram lowered the shattered construct carefully, as though gentleness now mattered after the fact.
On the far side of the hall, Malik stood with Captain Elara, watching Ilya of the Luminary Order set up a ring of silvered markers across the stone floor.
The markers glowed faintly in response to their presence.
That was new too.
Everything was new.
Kael looked down at his own hands.
The thin dark veins that sometimes flared beneath his skin were gone for the moment. His eyes felt normal. The pressure in his chest had quieted to something almost manageable.
Almost.
"Elara," Sen said at last, looking up from his notes, "I can confirm correlated mutation response across all surviving members of Patrol Seven."
Toren brightened. "That sounds impressive."
"It is alarming."
"Right. But academically impressive."
Sen ignored him and continued. "The event near the canal was not a standard infection spread. It was a resonance cascade."
Malik crossed his arms. "Translate."
The archivist rubbed at his temple. "Whatever bit Kael did not simply infect him. It triggered a multi-point Star-Blood reaction in everyone with sufficient exposure proximity."
"Meaning?" asked Bram.
"Meaning," said Elara quietly, "you all changed because of what happened to him."
No one liked that answer.
It settled over the room like ash.
Kael felt everyone not looking at him.
That was worse than if they had stared.
Sera broke the silence first.
"Well," she said, flexing the fingers of the hand that had disappeared into shadow the previous day, "I'd rather have weird powers than be dead in Hollow Row."
Malik gave her a flat look. "Those aren't mutually exclusive yet."
She smiled at him, humor sharp enough to cut. "That's the spirit."
Ilya finished placing the final marker and stepped back.
"Let's test control."
Elara nodded.
One by one, they tried.
Bram first.
He planted his feet and focused the way Sen instructed—breathe, center, remember the trigger point from before. For a few seconds nothing happened. Then the muscles in his arms and shoulders thickened visibly under his shirt, veins rising like cables under the skin. His height didn't change much, but his presence did.
He looked bigger.
Denser.
Like the air around him had become reluctant to disagree.
Bram stared down at himself. "I don't know if I like this."
"Your hammer does," said Sera.
He swung once at a reinforced target plate.
The impact dented three inches of tempered steel.
No one said anything for a second.
Then Toren whispered, "We are so deeply not normal anymore."
Sera went next.
She stood inside the marker ring, rolled her shoulders once, and exhaled.
"Try the same stress recall," said Ilya. "Think about the moment before displacement."
Sera's face went blank.
For an instant the light around her seemed to fail. Her edges blurred. Then she was simply gone.
Toren yelped.
Malik's hand was on his sword before thought caught up to motion.
Sera reappeared on top of the iron railing beside Kael, one knee bent, crossbow in hand.
He flinched.
She smirked. "That was fun."
"You disappeared," Toren said.
"No," Sera corrected, dropping lightly back to the floor. "I was somewhere else for half a second."
Sen looked like he might faint from excitement.
"Umbra shift," he whispered, writing faster.
Malik stepped into the ring without being asked.
Unlike the others, he didn't seem interested in discovery.
He wanted certainty.
Ilya handed him three weighted blades.
"Throw."
Malik did.
Halfway across the room, all three blades jerked sharply to the side and embedded themselves in the wall in a crooked line nowhere near the target.
Malik frowned.
Again.
This time the blades slowed in midair as if moving through syrup before dropping point-first into the stone.
Toren's grin turned feral.
"That," he said, "is extremely useful."
Malik looked disgusted. "It feels wrong."
"Congratulations," said Sera. "You're alive."
Then came Toren.
He took the relic compass Sen had brought up from the sealed archive cabinet and wrapped both hands around it.
Normally the thing only responded to coded Luminary access.
In Toren's grip it flared bright blue, rings unlocking and spinning open like a flower.
Toren froze.
"So I'm either a genius," he said slowly, "or very cursed."
"Those are also not mutually exclusive," Malik muttered.
At last all eyes turned to Elara.
She hadn't wanted to test.
Kael could tell.
Maybe because if hers reacted too, there would be no more pretending the squad had escaped Hollow Row in any normal sense.
But she stepped into the ring anyway.
She drew her solar blade.
Usually the weapon required a thumb-trigger and internal charge flare before the light edge ignited.
This time it lit the moment it cleared the sheath.
Gold-white fire ran down the length of it in a clean blaze so bright Kael had to narrow his eyes.
The silver markers around her began to hum.
Ilya actually stepped back.
Sen whispered something that sounded prayer-like and terrified.
Elara held the blade out at arm's length, her expression unreadable.
"It's stronger," she said.
No one argued.
Kael knew he should say something.
Instead he heard Bram's heart rate spike.
Sera's breath hitch.
Malik's grip tighten around the pommel of his sword.
They were all waiting for the same thing.
For him.
Elara lowered her blade and looked at him directly.
"Your turn."
Kael walked into the marker ring.
The room felt colder inside it.
He could hear the blood in his ears.
Not just his own.
Everyone's.
The hunger woke slightly at the sound and he crushed it back down hard enough to make his jaw ache.
"Do not force it," said Ilya.
"That's useful," Kael said, staring at the stone floor. "I have no idea how I'm doing any of this."
"Think about Hollow Row," Elara said.
He looked up.
Her voice had changed. Softer. Not gentle exactly. Anchored.
"Think about the moment before the wall broke in you."
He didn't want to.
He did anyway.
The porch. Darius. The smile. The pressure of ancient blood and impossible intention. The certainty that if he failed to move, he would die and so would everyone behind him.
Something answered inside him.
His chest burned.
Darkness gathered at his back.
The silver markers screamed.
Two wings of black shadow ripped outward behind him—not feathers, not smoke, but something in between, sharp-edged and alive with crimson light at the seams. They spread once, violently, and the lanterns in the hall blew out.
Toren swore.
Bram stumbled back.
Sera did not move at all.
Malik had his sword half-drawn.
Elara stood her ground.
Kael felt the wings like extra limbs he had always forgotten were there.
For one terrifying, intoxicating second, they made perfect sense.
He knew he could turn them into blades.
Spears.
Walls.
He knew he could kill everyone in the room before the first body hit the floor.
He knew it the way a starving man knows hunger.
Then Elara said his name.
Just that.
"Kael."
The sound cut through the surge like cold water.
The wings collapsed instantly.
Darkness snapped inward and vanished.
The lanterns relit one by one under backup charge.
Kael dropped to one knee, shaking.
No one rushed forward.
Smart.
Finally Sen whispered the thing none of them wanted to hear.
"Eclipse convergence."
Malik sheathed his sword with slow care.
"That sounded bad."
"It is," Sen said.
Kael lifted his head.
Through the ringing in his ears he heard Elara step closer.
"Can you stand?"
He swallowed and nodded.
"Yeah."
It was a lie.
But he stood anyway.
Because whatever they had become—
it had survived.
And that meant the world outside the wall had only gotten more dangerous.