So what is she playing at?
Is she trying to showcase the academy's talents to the world? Use Astron and Ethan as proof that their training philosophy works? That they're producing Hunters stronger and faster than the other academies?
If that was the case…
It made sense.
Eleanor exhaled sharply, her boots shifting quietly against the stone floor.
But why not just say that?
Why hide it? Why tiptoe around sothing so obvious?
Unless…
Unless the tournant wasn't just about showcasing.
Unless soone wanted to claim talent before the Federation even realized what it had.
She stared down the hall, expression unreadable, but her thoughts were dark.
Alia's words replayed in her mind:
"They'll be the ones repaying it."
Not just performing.
Repaying.
If that's the case…
If Alia was using the tournant to get back at her—to make so pointed statent about Eleanor's independence, her "unauthorized" resource use, her unorthodox ntorships—then fine.
Let her play that ga.
Let her push cadets onto the stage like pieces in a power struggle.
Eleanor could deal with that. Politics were part of the job.
But…
Sothing didn't sit right.
It wasn't just the maneuvering. It wasn't just the veiled condescension, or even the smugness that clung to Alia's every word.
It was sothing else.
Sothing quieter.
Sothing that Eleanor couldn't quite na—but felt.
A weight beneath the surface. A pull that hadn't been there before.
She narrowed her eyes.
There's more to it.
She could feel it like a splinter caught beneath skin—not painful, but present. Irritating. Familiar.
Maybe I'm overthinking it…
The thought slipped through Eleanor's mind like fog through iron bars—distant, unwelco, but not entirely dismissible.
Maybe this really was just Alia being Alia.
Petty. Political. Strategic in the way only soone who had grown up behind closed doors and polished halls could be—dripping courtesy while masking ambition.
And yet…
Eleanor's jaw tensed.
With my identity…
With her rank, her record, her title as the Invoker, she had long learned to trust what others dismissed.
Instinct.
Not the fleeting gut feelings born from stress or paranoia—but that cold, slow-clenching intuition that had saved her more tis than mana shields or contingency spells ever had.
The one that whispered: You're not seeing the full picture.
And that whisper was growing louder.
Still… she had nothing to act on.
No na. No movent. No policy breach.
Only the sense that Alia's words had been too deliberate. That her detachnt wasn't natural. That even her warning—the one veiled as helpful—was frad too neatly.
Eleanor exhaled slowly through her nose.
She had nothing left to say.
Not yet.
No warning to issue.
No accusations to make.
Just that familiar, coiled silence she wore when the battlefield was still fogged and the enemy hadn't revealed their front line.
She turned without another word, coat brushing behind her as her steps echoed down the corridor—asured, unwavering.
If this is the start of sothing…
Then she would be ready when it moved.
And so, she walked—back toward her wing, toward her office, toward her cadets.
Whatever was coming—
She'd et it head-on.
******
The wind cut sideways across the open field, sharp as knives.
Heavy boots sank into the soggy earth, each step squelching with reluctant weight. A line of five figures trudged forward under the burden of layered packs, detector pylons, mana calibration rigs, and shielded boxes clamped to their backs like tallic tumors. Every movent clinked or clanged or thudded, as if the equipnt itself resented being out here.
Overhead, the sky was a stretched canvas of black, thick with low clouds that reflected none of the city's distant glow. Not a single star. Just dark and darker, made worse by the occasional flicker of static blue from the long-range detection rods strapped to their harnesses.
"Gods," muttered one of them, a tall man carrying a rig nearly half his height. "If we're gonna be forced out here in the middle of nowhere, the Association could at least spring for better lights."
Another voice—lighter, more annoyed than tired—grumbled back from behind. "You said that last ti, Ryn. And the ti before that. Pretty sure the lights are fine. The company just knows we're expendable."
"Oh, please." Ryn twisted his head to glance over his shoulder. "If we were expendable, they wouldn't have strapped fifty thousand credits of magi-tech to our backs."
"That's why we're expendable," the voice returned, dry. "The gear costs more than we do."
"Can both of you shut up?" A third one spoke up—older, with a clipped tone that suggested he'd already filed this night under "complete waste of ti." "Focus your scans. If this is a false flag again, I want it logged, tagged, and buried before sunrise."
"Sure, boss," Ryn muttered, shifting the weight of the relay pole against his shoulder. "Just love getting frostbite for theoretical signatures."
The team pressed onward through the field, the grass flattened into patches of half-frozen mud beneath their boots. The valley ahead dipped just slightly, enough to collect mist—and the mana readings were always worse in mist. Not dangerous, not yet. But it made the sensors twitchy. Unreliable. Like trying to hear whispers underwater.
A faint hum ca from the detector box on Jules's side—then spiked.
"Hold up," he said, stopping just before the slope. He raised a hand and waited for the others to cluster in. "Readings just doubled."
A mont passed. Then another. More lights blinked to life—soft blue, concentric rings expanding on the glass surface of the scanner.
"Mana fluctuation localized," the technician muttered, tapping in a set of glyphs. "Looks like a distortion signature. Type three. Maybe a residual imprint from a scout-class gate. Could be forming."
"Could be," Ryn echoed, rubbing his arms as a gust of cold air licked through the valley. "Could also be leftover static from that Class-E two weeks ago. Don't gates leave a mana scent or sothing? Like cosmic farts?"
Jules stared at him. "I hate that you're technically not wrong."
"Hey, I'm insightful."
"You're an idiot."
The oldest of the team—Gellard, by rank and temperant—lowered his own case and slid the lid open. Inside, a set of rune-tagged stakes pulsed faintly. "Don't care what it is. Protocol says we tag it, mark the coordinates, and send it back up to Central. If it blooms, we get the scouts out here in twelve hours. If not, they'll forget about us like usual."
"Warm beds," Ryn sighed.
"Warm pay cuts," soone else added under their breath.
The sound of glyphs activating filled the silence—a low harmonic chi as the stakes pulsed and sunk themselves into the frozen earth. From above, the wind howled again, rattling the antenna packs like bones in a dry field.
Then, faintly—just faintly—sothing responded.
A pulse.
A hum that didn't co from their equipnt.
The team went still.
Jules turned toward the slope, his eyes narrowing.
"…Gellard."
"I heard it," the older man said flatly, already raising his tablet. "Mark it. Whatever's waking up down there—it just crossed into active resonance range."
"Damn it," Ryn muttered, kneeling to double-check the stabilizer feed. "It's forming."
"Rank?"
"Too early to tell. But if it hums like that again, we might be looking at a Class-6 or higher."
Jules blinked. "Class-6?"
His brows furrowed, the edge of skepticism creeping into his voice. "You sure about that?"
Even Gellard paused.
The wind had picked up again—cold, sharp, too coincidental. Static danced faintly along the rim of the nearest detection stake, a soft fizz of energy crackling in the night air.
Ryn squinted toward the slope, one hand shading the scanner screen from the flurry. "Feels weird for a Class-6…" he muttered. "I an, yeah, the pulse hit hard—but that resonance? That didn't feel like your average brute-force gate. It felt… off. Tuned wrong."
"I know."
Ryn's voice wasn't defensive now—just quiet. "That's what's bothering . Sothing is strange."
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