The announcement went up on the great doors three days after the ceremony.
First-Year Field Examination
The Training Rift will be opened at dawn in five days.
Students will enter in teams of four.
Each team will include one support student from Class D.
The basement classroom groaned when Crane read it out.
Everyone knew what “support student” meant.
It meant porter.
It meant carrying food, water, bandages, and the bags of noble children through a Rift full of monsters, while the noble children did all the fighting and got all the credit.
“The Training Rift is rated F to E,” Crane said.
“It has been used by this Academy for two hundred years.
It is perfectly safe, as long as you do what you are told.” He looked down at his list.
“Teams are assigned by the instructors.
You will find yours posted tonight.”
That night, Aren found his name on the doors under Team One.
Vivienne Ashgrave (Leader)
Darius Holt
Celia Penrose
Aren (Support)
He read it twice.
Then he went looking for the clerk.
“Professor Crane made the teams,” the clerk said, before Aren could even ask.
“He said it would be educational.”
Mira did not take it well.
“He’s doing it on purpose,” she said.
They were sitting on the broken fence in the old practice yard, where the training post had been.
The groundskeeper had taken away the bottom half, and now there was only a round scar of bare stone in the weeds.
“Crane, I mean.
He’s putting you with the two people in this school who hate you most.
And Penrose’s sister, Aren.
The weak-chinned idiot who lied about seeing you at the vault.
That whole family will be watching for a chance to make you look bad.”
“I know.”
“Do you?
Because you keep saying ‘I know’ and then doing the stupid thing anyway.” She kicked at a weed.
“Rifts are dangerous.
Even training ones.
Two years ago, a second-year lost his hand in there.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“You’ll be carrying their bags.” She looked at him.
“If Holt decides to leave you behind with a pack of wolves, who’s going to stop him?
Her?”
Aren did not have a good answer to that.
Mira saw that he did not, and her face changed.
She dug in her pocket and pulled out something small: a flat clay charm on a string, painted with a simple orange flame.
“Hearthwardens can bless one thing a week,” she said.
“I’ve only got the first level.
It won’t do much.
It might stop one hit.” She pushed it into his hand.
“Wear it.”
“Mira…”
“Wear it, or I’ll tell Nell you got hurt because you were too proud to wear a charm I made.”
He put it on.
The Training Rift was in a walled garden at the far end of the Academy grounds.
It looked like a tear in the air, the height of two men, standing in the middle of a circle of white stones.
Its edges shimmered and moved like heat over a summer road.
Through it, Aren could see grey trees and a purple sky.
A cold wind came out of it that smelled like old leaves and something under the leaves that he did not want to think about.
Six instructors stood around the circle.
Crane was one of them.
He did not look at Aren.
Team One went first, of course.
Vivienne walked to the front without looking back.
She wore light grey armor with a silver crescent on the chest, and she carried a slim sword at her hip.
Since her awakening, she had changed in ways that were hard to describe.
She did not walk differently or talk differently.
But the air around her felt heavier, the way the air feels before a storm.
When she passed the other students, they stepped out of her way without seeming to notice they were doing it.
Darius followed her, with a long sword on his back and a smile on his face.
Celia Penrose came after him.
She was a thin, quiet girl with a C-rank healing class, and she had not said a single word to Aren since the team was posted.
She looked at him now like he might steal her boots.
Aren came last, with three heavy packs on his shoulders and one in his arms.
“Try to keep up, Zero,” Darius said.
They stepped through the tear.
The other side was cold and very quiet.
The grey trees were tall and thin, with no leaves, only long pale branches that crossed overhead like old bones.
The ground was covered in grey moss that swallowed the sound of their steps.
Above them, the purple sky had no sun, but there was light anyway, flat and dim, coming from nowhere at all.
Aren had read about a hundred first dungeons in his old life.
Every one of them had been described as eerie, quiet, and beautiful.
Every one of them had gone horribly wrong.
He decided not to share this information with his team.
They walked for an hour before they found the first monsters.
Five Ash Wolves came out from between the trees, low and fast, with grey fur and eyes like burning coals.
They were E-rank, and they hunted together.
Celia stepped back behind Darius.
Darius drew his sword with a grin.
Vivienne did not draw her sword.
She lifted one hand.
The air above her filled with pale light.
Five thin crescents of silver appeared out of nothing, like slices of the moon, and flew forward faster than Aren’s eyes could follow.
Four of the wolves died in the same breath.
The fifth leaped at Darius, who cut it in half with one clean swing and then looked annoyed that he had only gotten one.
The whole fight took three seconds.
“Collect the cores,” Vivienne said, to no one in particular.
Celia looked at Aren.
So did Darius.
Aren put down the packs and knelt beside the first wolf with a small knife.
Monster cores were small stones that grew inside the chest of a beast, near the heart.
When you absorbed one, its energy became experience.
The ones from Ash Wolves were the size of a marble and as grey as ash.
Aren cut out all five, wiped them clean on the moss, and held them out on his palm.
Vivienne took four.
Darius took the other one.
Neither of them thanked him.
[Vivienne Ashgrave has absorbed 4 cores.]
[Vivienne Ashgrave F tier: Level 2 → Level 3.]
Nothing for me, Aren thought.
She grew, but I didn’t help her grow.
Cutting out the cores doesn’t count.
He had wondered about that.
The System was strict about what it called an investment.
Doing his job did not count.
It had to be something given, something risked, something that truly helped.
They kept walking.
An hour later, they found another pack, seven wolves this time.
Vivienne killed most of them with her silver crescents again.
Darius took two and made sure everyone saw it.
But Aren was standing at the back with the packs, where he could see everything, and he saw the eighth wolf.
It did not come with the others.
It came from behind, very low, very quiet, through the moss on Vivienne’s left side, where her eyes were busy with the fight in front of her.
It was bigger than the rest.
Its teeth were already showing.
There was no time to think.
Aren picked up the nearest thing, which was a heavy water flask, and threw it as hard as he could.
It struck the wolf on the side of the head.
The beast flinched, snarling, and in the half-second it lost, Vivienne turned.
A silver crescent took its head off before it hit the ground.
The clearing was quiet.
Vivienne stood very still, looking at the dead wolf, then at the dented flask lying in the moss beside it, then at him.
Darius laughed.
“Look at that.
The servant threw a bottle.”
Vivienne did not laugh.
She looked at Aren with no expression at all.
Then she knelt, cut the core out of the big wolf herself, and absorbed it.
[Investment recorded.]
[Vivienne Ashgrave: Level 3 → Level 4.]
[Anchor progressed through Host’s investment.]
[Mirror Return triggered.]
A small wheel appeared in front of his eyes, only the size of a dinner plate this time, and only he could see it.
It had four colored segments: two wide ones marked x10 and x100, a narrow one marked x1,000, and a very thin one marked x10,000.
It spun.
It slowed.
It stopped on the widest segment.
[Result: x10.]
[Experience received: Vivienne Ashgrave’s level gain x10.]
[Host F tier: Level 1 → Level 4.]
Warmth rushed through his body, starting in his chest and spreading out to his fingers.
His tired shoulders felt light under the packs.
The cut on his arm stopped aching.
Three levels in one breath, from a single thrown flask.
x10, he thought, a little dizzy.
The worst result on the wheel.
And it just did more for me than a month of training.
“We should keep moving,” Celia said nervously.
“We should,” Vivienne agreed.
But she did not move right away.
She was still looking at Aren, with her head tilted slightly, as if she were trying to read something written very small.
Then the ground shook.
It was not much.
A small tremor, the kind you might not notice in a city.
But here, in the silent grey forest, every pale branch above them rattled at once.
Far away, deeper in the Rift, something made a sound.
It was not a howl.
It was lower than that, and longer, and it went on for so long that Celia put her hands over her ears.
Behind them, toward the entrance, a red flare rose into the purple sky.
It was the instructors’ signal.
Aren had heard about it in class, and he remembered what it meant.
Something has entered the Rift that does not belong here.
Return immediately.
The sound came again, closer this time.