The hall buzzed before anyone spoke.

  Not loud—just alive. Armor shifting. Low voices cutting off when instructors passed. The kind of energy that came from knowing this wasn’t a drill you walked away from at the bell.

  Lysara stood near the back with the other field apothecaries, satchel already checked twice, hands folded to keep from fidgeting. She’d read the assignment sheet three times and still felt like she’d missed something important.

  First hunt.

  First gate.

  First time outside the academy’s careful margins.

  Professor Vern stepped forward.

  Silence fell the way it always did around him—fast and absolute.

  “Southern forest deployment,” he said. “Live objectives. Mixed-experience formation. This assignment will determine who is mission-integratable and who returns for remediation.”

  A pause. Just long enough to sting.

  Team compositions appeared behind him. Knights. Mages. Scouts. Apothecaries. One alchemist, conditional.

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  Lysara found her name near the bottom of the list.

  Lifeward — New

  Her stomach flipped.

  “This is not a demonstration,” Vern continued. “This is not an exercise you can fail without consequence. You will move as a unit. You will follow formation discipline. And you will remember that the forest does not care about your potential.”

  Eyes flicked toward Xyrion.

  He stood still, already composed, already distant.

  Kayden leaned against a pillar near the knights, relaxed in a way that made her more nervous than if he’d looked tense.

  Vern finished. Orders followed. Dismissal snapped sharp.

  The noise returned all at once.

  Lysara exhaled, then followed the flow toward the gates.

  She had expected something… dramatic. Light. Wind. A sense of falling.

  Instead, it hummed. Low. Constant. Patient.

  She stood between the senior apothecary and Tessa, fingers brushing the satchel strap as the gate circle flared to life. Runes locked into place. The air thickened.

  “First time?” Adeline murmured.

  Lysara nodded.

  “Don’t fight it. It’s worse if you do.”

  That was not reassuring.

  The world folded.

  Not pain—pressure. A moment where up and down lost meaning and the air tasted like metal.

  Then—

  Heat.

  Sun.

  Dust under her boots.

  They stood just inside the southern border town, walls rising in pale stone behind them, banners snapping in a dry wind that smelled of sand and old iron.

  The town pulsed with movement. Wagons. Guards. Merchants calling over one another. Nothing like Brimward’s controlled quiet.

  This place expected trouble.

  Lysara swallowed.

  She felt like she was back home.