The infirmary cot was harder than it looked.
Yuna shifted for the tenth time, trying to find a position that didn't aggravate her bandaged arm. The healer had ordered rest. No training for twenty-four hours. Her body agreed. Her mind didn't.
One hundred seventeen days. And I'm lying here doing nothing.
The wound throbbed. A reminder that yesterday had been real. The void-hound, the combat, the wings that had held for twenty-three seconds.
Second Mark. She'd reached Second Mark.
But she'd also gotten injured. Nearly died. Would have died if Marcus hadn't finished the creature.
Still insufficient. Just slightly less insufficient than before.
A knock at the infirmary door.
"You awake?" Aria's voice. The wheelchair hummed as she rolled inside without waiting for an answer.
"Not much choice." Yuna pushed herself up against the headboard. Her arm screamed. She ignored it. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." Aria positioned her wheelchair beside the cot. Her eyes swept over Yuna in that analyzing way she had, cataloguing injuries, fatigue levels, psychological state. "I came to talk."
"About what?"
"You. Me. Why we're both here pretending we're fine when we're obviously not."
Yuna studied Aria.
The tactical analyst was immaculate as always. Dark hair cut short and practical. Sharp features. The wheelchair sleek and modern, looking almost technological against the medieval stone of the infirmary.
But something was different today. A tightness around her eyes. A tension in her shoulders.
"You spoke with Thess," Yuna guessed.
"She has a way of making you talk." Aria's voice was flat. Controlled. "Apparently it's therapeutic. I find it more annoying than anything."
"What did she make you talk about?"
Silence. Aria's hands gripped her wheelchair armrests. White-knuckled.
"The accident," she said finally. "How I ended up in this chair."
Yuna waited. Didn't push. Let the silence stretch.
Aria was the one who broke it.
"Three years ago. London. I was a tactical analyst for the Metropolitan Police. Rising fast. Good at my job. The best, actually." No arrogance in the words. Just fact. "My family hated it."
"Your family?"
"Old money. Nobility. The Steelwright name means something in certain circles." Aria's laugh was bitter. "They expected me to quit. Marry well. Produce heirs. Continue the bloodline. I refused. They disowned me."
Yuna's chest tightened. "That's horrible."
"That's reality. At least in my world." Aria shrugged. Too casual. Too practiced. "I didn't care. I had my career. I was going to prove them wrong. Show them I didn't need their money or their name or their approval."
"What happened?"
Aria's hands tightened on the armrests.
"Drunk driver. Late night. I was coming home from a surveillance operation. He ran a red light, t-boned my car at an intersection." Her voice was mechanical. Reciting facts. "I woke up in hospital with a fractured spine. T11-T12 vertebrae. Surgery stabilized it, but the damage was done. Legs permanently paralyzed."
The words hung in the air.
"My family visited once," Aria continued. "My mother stood at the foot of my bed and told me this was God punishing my pride. Then they left. Haven't spoken to them since."
Yuna didn't know what to say.
She thought about her own mother. The hospital bed. The morphine drip. The slow fade from person to memory.
But at least her mother had loved her. Had held her hand. Had said "you are enough" with her final breath.
Aria's family had looked at their daughter in a hospital bed and told her she deserved it.
"I'm sorry," Yuna said quietly. "That's... I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I don't need pity." Aria's voice sharpened. Defense mechanism. "I need you to understand something."
"What?"
"When the portal took me, I thought maybe it would fix me. Magic world. Healing powers. Impossible things." Aria's jaw tightened. "I survived the crossing, arrived in Valdris, and the first thing I did was try to move my legs."
She didn't need to say what happened.
"They still don't work," Aria said. "Magic didn't fix me. The Veil didn't transform me. I came to a world where people manifest wings and manipulate time and bend reality. And I'm still in this chair."
"But you're here," Yuna said. "You survived. You're fighting."
"I'm analyzing." Aria's voice was sharp. "There's a difference. Yesterday, when the void-hound attacked, I didn't fight. I coordinated. Called formations. Watched from the back while you and Marcus and Chen Wei actually did something."
"That coordination saved our lives. Your formations worked."
"Because the rest of you could move." Aria's control cracked. Just slightly. "I'm a brain in a chair, Yuna. In a world where survival means combat, I can't even stand up to fight."
Yuna pushed herself upright. The movement pulled at her stitches. She didn't care.
"Do you know why I'm here?" she asked.
Aria blinked. "What?"
"Fifteen rejection letters. 2.1 Resonance. Every academy on Earth told me I wasn't enough. Insufficient potential. Insufficient baseline. Insufficient everything." Yuna held Aria's gaze. "I came to Valdris and my wings barely flicker. Marcus is terrified of his own strength. David is seventeen and thinks he's going to die. We're all broken, Aria. Every single one of us."
"But you can walk."
"And you can see."
Aria froze.
"The formations yesterday," Yuna continued. "You saw where the void-hound would strike before it moved. Knew exactly where to position everyone. Predicted attack patterns three steps ahead." She leaned forward. "That's not normal tactical training. That's something else."
"Thess called it Tactical Nexus," Aria said slowly. "RIFT Attunement. The ability to see the battlefield as a system."
"Then use it. Stop treating the wheelchair like it makes you less. It doesn't. It just means you fight differently."
Aria was quiet for a long moment.
"Easy for you to say. You can fly."
"I could fly for twenty-three seconds. After weeks of training and almost dying." Yuna's voice was firm. "You've been coordinating combat operations for years. You're already further along than any of us. You just can't see it because you're too busy seeing the chair."
The infirmary was quiet.
Somewhere outside, training continued. Yuna could hear the distant sounds of combat drills, shouts, the crackle of magical energy being poorly controlled.
Aria stared at her hands. Those analytical eyes turned inward for once.
"My family called me broken," she said quietly. "The Met called me valuable but limited. Everyone I've ever known has looked at the wheelchair first and me second."
"Then they're idiots." Yuna's voice was simple. Honest. "I look at you and I see the person who kept us alive yesterday. Who analyzes everyone's weaknesses and turns them into strengths. Who figured out the Ancient System's cycle when Thess wouldn't explain it."
"I haven't figured it out yet."
"But you will. Because that's what you do." Yuna reached out. Touched Aria's hand. "Legs don't make you sufficient. Your mind does. And your mind is the most dangerous thing in this Academy."
Aria's breath caught.
For a moment, just a moment, the mask cracked. The armor fell. And Yuna saw the girl underneath. Scared. Hurt. Desperate to believe she was worth something beyond what her body could or couldn't do.
"That might be the nicest thing anyone's said to me in three years," Aria whispered.
"Then you've been talking to the wrong people."
Aria laughed. Actually laughed. Not the sharp, performative sound she usually made. Something real.
"You're ridiculous," she said. "You know that? Injured, exhausted, barely Second Mark, and you're giving me a pep talk."
"Someone has to. You spend so much time analyzing everyone else, you forget to analyze yourself clearly."
"Occupational hazard."
The door opened.
Thess stood in the entrance, robes shifting colors, expression unreadable.
"Touching moment," she said dryly. "But training resumes in one hour. Aria, you're leading tactical exercises today. Yuna, you're observing. Consider it a bonding experience."
"I thought I was on rest," Yuna protested.
"You are. You're resting while watching Aria work." Thess's eyes gleamed. "Consider it educational."
She left without waiting for a response.
Aria looked at Yuna. "She planned this."
"Probably."
"Made sure we'd talk. Work through our issues. Bond as teammates."
"Definitely."
Aria's lips twitched. Almost a smile. "I hate when she's right."
"Get used to it." Yuna swung her legs over the side of the cot. Her arm throbbed. Her body ached. But something felt lighter than before. "One hundred seventeen days. We're going to need each other."
"We're going to need more than that."
"Then we'll find it." Yuna stood. Wobbled. Let Aria steady her with a hand on her good arm. "Together."
Aria looked at her. Really looked, the way she looked at tactical problems. Analyzing. Assessing.
Whatever she saw made her nod.
"Together," she agreed. "Now let's go watch me terrify some insufficient summons with grid formations."
The tactical exercises were brutal.
Aria ran them from the center of the training grounds, wheelchair positioned where she could see everything. Her voice carried commands with military precision. Move here. Flank there. Anticipate. React. Faster.
Yuna watched from the sidelines, arm in a sling, observing.
And she saw it.
Aria's eyes flickered. Just slightly. A faint shimmer that appeared when she was deep in tactical mode. Lines forming in her vision, invisible to everyone else, showing movement patterns and probability vectors.
RIFT Attunement. Awakening.
She's seeing the battlefield the way I see emotions, Yuna realized. Feeling it. Reading it. Becoming part of it.
The wheelchair didn't matter.
The legs didn't matter.
What mattered was the mind behind those flickering eyes. The mind that saw seven moves ahead and positioned her pieces accordingly.
Aria Steelwright. The Insufficient Noble.
But there was nothing insufficient about what Yuna was watching.
After training, they sat together.
The seven summons, exhausted, collapsed on the courtyard cobblestones. Marcus with his carefully controlled hands. Chen Wei rigid and watchful. Lyric performing calm. David clutching his book. Asha silent, eyes seeing futures.
And Aria, in her wheelchair, central.
"Tomorrow we run combat simulations," Aria announced. "Full team. I've been analyzing our weaknesses. We have too many."
"Cheerful," Lyric muttered.
"Realistic." Aria's voice was sharp, but there was something different in it now. Less bitter. More focused. "We survived one void-hound. There will be more. Worse. We need to be ready."
"We will be," Marcus said quietly. His hands weren't trembling.
"We don't have a choice," Chen Wei added.
David nodded, terrified but determined.
Asha's lips moved. No sound, but the meaning was clear. Agreement.
Yuna looked at them. Seven broken people. Seven insufficient summons.
One hundred seventeen days.
And for the first time, she thought maybe, maybe, they might actually make it.
[END CHAPTER 8]