The corruption rotation began with a ledger.

  Lysara arrived at the lab corridor before the bells, as instructed. The door was unmarked. The guard ward was not. She placed her palm against the stone plate beside the frame and waited.

  A soft, assessing pulse ran up her arm.

  The lock clicked.

  Inside, she was assigned to Station Three and instructed to observe only. Monitoring applied. Access subject to change without notice.

  The specimen—a juvenile scavencrow—presented no external markers of decay. No lesions. No aberrant growths. Respiration was elevated above baseline. When mana density increased, the response was immediate: fixation, forward lean, proximity testing. Predatory orientation without overt strike behavior.

  Caldrien framed the reaction as directional bias rather than intent. The lecture drew heavily from Adaptive Mana Response Under Sustained Environmental Pressure by Renn, Valos.

  The paper proposed regulation only.

  No cure. No reversal.

  The continuation section was absent.

  Lysara read it anyway, despite its lack of relevance to her own condition.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  By the time she filed the work away, she was already running late.

  Training Evaluation

  The next practice made no reference to the previous day.

  The training ring filled by habit. Gear adjusted. Wards settled into place.

  Tessa arrived early.

  She chose a position farther from the center than usual, spacing herself with deliberate care. She did not look toward Lysara.

  Lysara took the spot beside her anyway.

  Tessa’s fingers tightened once on her staff. Then loosened.

  Three rotations passed in close succession. Different drills. Same margins. Tessa widened space she once held. Shortened arcs. Yielded timing she could have kept.

  Lysara stayed.

  When the whistle cut, Tessa stepped away first, increasing the distance she’d held all session.

  She didn’t look back.

  Lysara let her go.

  Observation Addendum

  The next corruption block came with an addendum.

  A runner found Lysara between rings and handed her a narrow slip sealed in gray wax. No crest. Just the Academy mark.

  OBSERVATION ADDENDUM — FIELD LOG

  Attendance required.

  The time cut directly across her self-study window.

  She adjusted her schedule without emotion.

  The observation chamber was not a lab.

  Stone benches behind a barrier screen. The far wall opened onto a section of green where live training exercises ran.

  Two instructors waited. One held posture like authority. The other carried a clipboard like judgment.

  They pointed. She sat.

  Observe and mark where tracks or implied corruption indicate.

  The recording began.

  Scouts moved early—fast, silent, correcting routes without speaking. Some reset mid-run, as if the ground itself resisted them.

  Lysara marked the quiet failures.

  The ones that didn’t trigger alarms.

  “You understand what you’re watching?” one of them asked.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded, satisfied.

  Which left her uncertain what, exactly, she had just agreed to see.