Silence made every step feel heavier than it was.
Seryn halted for a heartbeat. Before he set his foot down again, he listened to the tremor beneath the soil.
Nothing moved on the surface, but the mana was different here—tighter, woven with more care.
"The smell changed," Rien whispered. "Soil's drier, less rot."
Lyra drew another small sign in her notebook. "Noting it. This should be the middle ring on the exam maps."
Kai glanced around, not bothering to hide his unease. "Why is everything so neat? Even the trees look like they're standing in line."
"Because someone put them that way," Seryn said. "Nature doesn't do symmetry like this."
Ten steps later, the mist peeled back to reveal a small clearing ahead.
In its center stood three stones.
They came up to a person's waist, smooth, gray-white columns with veins running through them. Each bore the Academy's crest ringed with Temple lines; the distance between them was almost exactly equal. The triangle they formed was not naturally pleasing, but calculated.
"Well," Kai muttered. "There's the 'fun' part of the exam."
Rien raised his bow slightly. "My line of sight is fine. But in a space this open, we'll be exposed."
Lyra took an involuntary step back. "Mana density is spiking around them. Not steady… it's pulsing. Like a heartbeat."
Seryn walked more slowly toward the center, stopping short of the stones. He lifted his hand, hovering his fingers in the air rather than touching the stone, and let the gray current thin into his fingertips.
The upper layer was familiar Temple monitoring work—standard exam patterns. But right beneath it, running down through the column, was another mesh. Brighter. Colder. Hungrier.
"These three stones are the field's main knots," he said. "They're part of the official trial. But someone layered something else underneath."
Kai squinted. "Let me guess, your gray friend is telling you that?"
"No," Seryn replied. "You can feel it even without that. This wasn't built just to measure students."
Rien circled the perimeter. From where he stood, he could see the triangle almost perfectly. "It could be some sort of selection mechanic. One stone is correct, the others are traps. Or all three are needed, but in sequence."
Lyra rubbed her palms together. "Touching one could change the whole field. Maybe it resets the forest, reshapes the map."
Kai rolled a shoulder. "Or a fourth stone appears and says 'just kidding'."
When no one laughed, he looked at Seryn. "So? Which one do we touch?"
Seryn didn't need much imagination to picture what would happen to anyone who walked straight up and laid a hand on the stones. The exam designers had a certain style; nothing that looked this simple ever was.
He checked the surroundings first.
Along the edge of the clearing, a thin ring of small white mushrooms sat like a drawn boundary. In a few spots, the soil bulged slightly, as if it had been disturbed recently.
"Crossing that line wakes something up," he said. "Even if we never touch the stones."
Rien studied the mushroom ring. "Approach angle might matter as well. Going in at a slant instead of straight could change what we trigger."
"So straight walkers die early and sideways walkers die slightly later?" Kai muttered.
"We're not dying," Seryn said. "But some people will leave this exam and never sit another."
Lyra took a sharp breath. "One of you decide. Mana density keeps rising. It… feels like the place is listening."
That line hit deeper than she knew.
Yes, this place was watching.
But for whom?
"Lyra," Seryn said, "prep a shield, but not a big field dome. A tight shell. One person max."
"Alright."
"Rien, keep circling outside the ring. If something comes up from underground, you'll see it first. Kai…"
"I know," Kai cut in. "I am not the one sprinting ahead this time. Just tell me this: who's putting their skin on the line?"
"I am," Seryn said.
All three looked at him.
Rien's expression said, who else would it be?
Lyra chewed her lip.
Kai, unusually, stayed quiet for a moment before protesting.
"Fine," he sighed. "But the second you do something stupid, I drag you back. By the neck if necessary."
Seryn dipped his head in agreement.
He walked up to the clearing's edge. Stopped at the mushroom line, lifted his foot, and held it there for a moment. The gray current beat harder in his chest, as if it, too, were waiting.
"Watch me," he told it silently. "But don't spill out."
He stepped forward.
Crossing the mushroom ring felt like slipping through an invisible curtain.
The air shivered. A soft hum brushed his eardrums, and a metallic taste bloomed at the back of his tongue.
The seals on the stones flickered to life for a heartbeat, then dimmed again.
They were trying to recognize him.
"First reaction is just a scan," he thought. "No attack yet."
He took another step, then one more. He now stood just outside the triangle the stones formed.
"Don't step into the middle," Rien called softly. "Stay off the center."
"I'm only reading the corners," Seryn replied.
He half-closed his eyes and thinned the gray flow down to his fingers. The official Temple lines glowed faintly, active and sharp. Beneath them, invisible to normal sight, a second net glimmered—a spiderweb etched into stone.
It ran down the length of each marker, then into the soil, where the three strands joined and stretched out toward some distant point.
And deeper still, further along that line, a pulse he recognized:
The northern tower, he thought, feeling the rhythm.
This time he did not reach for it.
He was about to pull back when something shot out of the hidden mesh—a thin spark that snapped into his gray flow.
He tried to retreat on reflex, but the spark was already in his chest.
It wasn't pain. It was more like a tag, a line that said I see you.
Lyra's voice sounded far away. "Seryn? Something wrong?"
"Still here," he said, making sure his tone stayed steady.
"What did it do?" Kai asked.
"It tried to mark me," he thought, but he didn't say that aloud. Instead: "Hasn't attacked yet."
When the underlying net realized it couldn't swallow his gray completely, it changed tactics.
The soil around the stones bulged.
"Kai, back!" Seryn shouted.
He was a fraction too late. Three spots heaved at once, and dark tendrils lunged upward. They looked like roots at first, but their movements were far too quick: slender-bodied, many-legged creatures spilling from the stone bases and fanning out.
"Shadow crawlers," Rien said. "But not the wild ones. These are forge-made—fed on seal residue."
Kai instinctively drew his sword and rushed forward. "Now this I know how to deal with."
Lyra flung out a hand. "Shield!"
The first beast lunged at Seryn's left side—low, fast, silent.
He pulled wind under his feet, hopped sideways, and twisted his body; the creature's leap passed through empty air. At the same time, one of Rien's arrows punched through the narrow hinge that held its segments together. The crawler's body snapped and crumbled into black dust.
The second veered straight at Kai.
Kai slashed, but the thing stopped short, flattening its body like ink and slipping under its own shadow before reappearing from a different angle.
Not roots, Seryn thought. More like recorded attacks replaying themselves.
"Kai!" he barked. "Hit the shadow, not the body!"
For a moment Kai didn't understand. Then he saw that the creature's shadow lagged half a step behind, thicker than it should be. He drove his blade not into the writhing limbs, but into the darker patch on the ground.
Steel bit earth, and the shadow itself tore. The crawler briefly lost shape and scattered.
"Two," Lyra panted. "Third—left!"
The last one went for Lyra. She was caught in mid-preparation; her hands were full of mana, not defense.
Seryn moved before he thought. He called on no gray power at all—only legs, lungs, and the wind he knew. He threw himself in front of her, taking the leap across his chest.
The creature flared with the same aura that had seeped out of the stones. Its legs shredded cloth and cut skin, hot and sharp.
And then the gray moved on its own.
The line the stones had tried to brand into him flared inside his chest and snapped back.
It didn't explode with sound or light; it just reversed the push. The energy threading through the crawler shot backward.
The thing flew off his chest, slammed into the base of the nearest stone, and smeared into an ugly black stain.
The hidden mesh along that stone lit up for an instant—
And part of it went dark.
Lyra grabbed his arm. "Are you alright?"
He forced his breathing steady. "Scratches. Nothing important."
Kai grimaced. "I swear I saw… something gray push out of you."
"You saw mist," Seryn said evenly. "Residual light from the seals dispersing."
Rien's eyes were on the stones. "No. That wasn't light. It hit the under-layer."
The mesh carved into the stone still hummed, but parts of it had gone fuzzy, like a half-erased drawing. Someone had tried to clean it off and given up halfway.
Lyra edged closer without touching. "The exam is still active but…"
"But what?" Kai asked.
"But right now those stones don't seem sure who they're working for," Seryn answered, more to himself than to them.
The gray current was heavy in his chest, but no longer flaring. It carried something new now—a tiny shard of the mark meant for him, lodged inside instead of on the surface.
"Is that bad or good?" Kai asked.
"Both," Seryn said. "Bad, because someone wanted these stones to collect things about us. Good, because they won't get as clear a picture as they hoped."
Rien slid his arrow back into its quiver. "What about the exam? If you broke the stones…"
"I didn't break them," Seryn replied. "I just introduced a small error into the hidden part. The official layer's still doing its job."
Lyra listened carefully. "So for the trial we're still valid. But the lower mesh… will send incomplete info."
He nodded. "Exactly."
Kai lifted a hand. "As someone who understood none of that: what now?"
"We use the stones," Seryn said. "But on our terms, not theirs."
He didn't step any closer. Instead, he studied the faces of the markers that looked toward each other. Small sigils representing directions had been carved there: north, east, west. South was missing.
"Interesting," he murmured. "No mark for south."
"So the exit isn't there," Kai said.
"Or the opposite," Rien countered. "They left it unmarked to protect it."
Seryn lifted a hand and sent a tiny gust at the northern stone from a distance.
The official pattern shivered and answered. The hidden mesh barely twitched at all.
"Maybe the lower layer's done with us," he thought. "Or still recalibrating."
Lyra's voice was almost a whisper. "Choice?"
Seryn's ribs ached, but his voice stayed firm. "We move toward the north stone. No touching. We only pass near and follow the path that leaves from there."
Kai frowned. "And that comes from… where, exactly?"
"When it tried to tag me, one branch of the lower mesh reached toward the north," Seryn said. "That line was older and deeper than the others."
Rien immediately moved to circle around. "I support that. At least we're not following the newest scars."
Lyra clenched her fists. "North it is, then."
They slipped along the edge of the triangle, never stepping into the center, never crossing the mushroom line again. The stones trembled as they passed, sigils flashing once before dimming.
None of them reached out a hand.
At the northern edge of the clearing, the trees thickened again, but this time they didn't stand in perfect rows. It was as if someone had said, beyond this point, I'm done, and nature had taken over from there.
"So we cleared the middle ring," Lyra said.
"For the exam, yes," Seryn answered. "For us… we'll see."
The gray current felt tired after the clash, but alongside that fatigue sat the faintest echo of the tag—now turned inside-out, carried with him instead of sitting on his skin.
"Up there, they're not the only ones watching anymore," he thought. "I'm carrying a piece of their line with me."
He kept that to himself.
---
Far away, in one of the Academy's tallest towers, Valen leaned over a crystal that showed the field from above. The forest spread like a patchwork beneath; over the stone triangle, a small flicker blinked and then thinned.
Seraphine stood by the window. "Field mesh registered a disruption," she said. "At the knot. Heart of the stones."
"Abnormal?" Valen asked.
"Abnormal but not fully broken," she answered. "Temple's observers are calling it 'a minor fluctuation' that 'doesn't affect the test.'"
Valen's gaze slid to a small glowing name in one corner of the crystal: Seryn Daskal – close to field node.
"Of course," he said softly. "Him again."
"Worried?" Seraphine asked.
"If the Temple notices? Not really," Valen said. "If they don't understand what they've seen? That's when I worry. Misreading a symptom is worse than missing it."
Seraphine stepped closer. "There's a second layer down there we didn't put in. The stones are trying to follow two sets of orders at once—official and… something else."
Valen's mouth tightened to a thin line. "And the boy is stuck where those orders overlap."
After a quiet moment, she said, "We're getting close to the point where we can't shield him anymore."
"I know," Valen replied. "That's why we didn't only give him protection. We gave him the question. From here on, it's about which answer he chooses."
The flicker drifted away from the stones on the crystal's surface; a four-man group moved north and vanished into the forest.
Valen turned his eyes to the clouds beyond the window. The sky above the trees was still gray.
But gray, to him, was no longer just uncertainty. It was possibility.
---
When the forest regained its more natural smell, Seryn glanced back once. The stones were gone from view. The heavy silence had loosened; birds were calling again, distant and thin.
"So that's it?" Kai asked. "Middle ring cleared?"
"Done," Seryn said. "Though the notes being written about us are just getting started."
"At least we're alive," Rien said with a small smile.
Lyra noticed the tears in Seryn's shirt and the thin lines of blood underneath. "Those cuts…"
"A few days and they're gone," Seryn said.
As the gray current settled, the fragment of the stones' brand lingered like a faint shade in his chest.
It belonged neither to the Temple nor fully to him.
"I let them try to mark me," he thought. "And I marked them back—inside myself."
He had no idea what that would turn into later.
But this was no longer a one-sided observation.
The exam went on.
And the forest was recording not just who survived, but who was seen—and how.
Seryn leveled his breathing and faced forward again.
"Move," he said. "That was only the first knot."
Kai shrugged. "I just hope the last knot bites less."
Rien checked his bowstring. Lyra opened a fresh page in her notebook.
And the four of them walked on, their silence different now—not empty, but aware.