Lysandra swung her legs over a rock, boots tapping a patient rhythm against the stone.
Below them, the shifting cavern breathed, columned light sliding across floating isles, the distant clatter of students taking up new positions.
For once, she looked small in the middle of the map: a single, bright dot overthinking.
"Is it…necessary?" she asked at last, voice clipped by the honest smallness of the question. "To go for another node right now?"
Kael, leaning on his slate with that analyzed look, glanced up. "Elaborate."
She drew a breath and counted on her fingers. "We've got three nodes generating points for us right now. One relic node—ten points down, the big prize—and two terrain nodes. The relic gives us two points every minute it's held. Each terrain node gives one point a minute. So together, that's about four points per minute coming in." She tapped the stone for emphasis. "Nice steady income."
Aurelia folded her arms, watching the way Lysandra's boots swung. "Which is useful," she said slowly. "But the math is simple, more nodes means more points, yes, but each node we claim forces us to divide our forces. Every split is an opportunity for someone else to strike."
Lysandra's grin was rueful. "I like cheap when it's safe."
Lucien stepped forward from where he'd been pacing, shoulders easing into that easy authority his title bought him. "We are currently generating four points a minute. That's good," he said, voice carrying. "But the other academies are aggressive. The Imperial Spire is precise enough to strike a hole in that income if we overextend. We still lead, but by a margin that narrows if we misplace our forces."
A flicker of something like calculation passed over Aurelia's face.
The duel earlier had taught her how small moments, timing, and a single redirected strike could collapse a carefully built advantage.
"If a rival takes a relic node," she said, "they not only get ten points immediately, they get the +2/min. That overwhelms one terrain node's +1. Relic control creates momentum."
Kael's eyes settled on her. "So do we chase momentum, or defend the steady income?" he asked. There was no show in his voice, only the habit of weighing options aloud.
Lysandra shrugged. "If we take one more relic and hold it, our per-minute income could jump. But taking relics means frontal fights. It means risk."
Aurelia's jaw tightened at the word risk. She pictured the map in her head, the scholar-wings hunched over sigils, the martial crowd braced behind Lucien's line, the Arcanum ready to explode into chaotic, glorious magic.
"We can split," Lucien said. "A small, mobile strike team goes for the nearest relic. The remainder holds and fortifies. Scholar-Wings keep the terrain node stabilized with the anchors Victoria planted. If the relic team succeeds, the gain can offset the thinness left behind. If they fail—"
"They fail," Aurelia finished, hard. "And we bleed points."
Kael tilted his head. "A hybrid approach, then. Small team, fast, surgical. Aurelia, Arthur, and Lysandra, you guys take it with me and a handful of Arcanum and Martial. Lucien, you stay and fortify with Cassian and Mirielle. Scholar-Wings keep the anchors and the rune packet ready. If the node destabilizes, Victoria hits the anchor and slows any assault."
Lysandra's eyebrows peaked. "You want me with you," she said. "Because I'm showy and terrifying with my fire?"
"You're the wild card," Kael said. "You snag attention. You make space."
Aurelia surprised herself by smiling. "Fine. We go fast, hit the relic hard, and claim it. No theatrics. No heroics for the sake of spectacle."
Lucien's smile was a blade wrapped in velvet. "I'll take the defensive posture. If you find yourself pushed, call the rune packet and fall back through the corridor Victoria set up. We'll hold and then counter."
Minutes later, the rope and slate, along with the hurried sigils, began to move.
Victoria, ink-smudged and breathless, crossed the stretch and handed them a condensed slate: emergency anchors already primed, a map of likely ambush vectors, a short list of minute-by-minute yields, and a scrawl of runic fail-safes. "If the node goes, pull the packet," she said. "It'll slow the attackers long enough for a disciplined counter."
Aurelia took the slate and looked at each face in turn, Lysandra dancing her feet, eager, Kael calm as the slate he carried, Lucien the steady wedge, Victoria's nervous certainty.
For a sliver of a second, she felt the old, sharp hunger, not for titles or crest, but for the proof that she could be more than a defeated spectacle.
"Then we go and get it," she said. "We either consolidate our lead, or we bleed trying. Either way, no wasted gestures. Run as if every second counts."
Lucien's laughter was sudden and low. "Perfect. Try not to ruin the lead before you even leave."
Aurelia shoved off the rock. The plan felt both small and enormous in her hands, a thing balanced on a knife's edge.
Down below, the cavern rearranged itself like an animal shifting its weight.
They moved out quickly, disciplined, flanked by shadows and sigils.
The relic team moved as Aurelia directed. They formed a slow, deliberate line across the rune-bridge, a living thing of braided light the Scholar's Wing had coaxed into being, leading up to a floating island.
The bridge hummed underfoot, each step a soft chime as the runes wrapped and unwrapped themselves to hold weight.
When they reached the island, the view stole their breath.
From this height, the cavern spread like a carved map, with floating isles, glimmering threads of Aether between ledges, and a jagged coastline of clouds spread beneath the students from other academies, dotted around relics and terrain stones, banners snapping in the thin wind.
Lysandra peered over the lip, curiosity bright. "Why here?" she asked.
Aurelia allowed a small smile. "To find our treasure," she said. "Better vantage, better choices."
They leaned over the rim together and picked out the targets.
Most relic nodes were already contested, with three rival groups holding watch, but one relic lay lonely, guarded by a single sentinel construct with no challengers nearby.
It was an easy count, a relic that could be taken cleanly if they moved fast.
Kael crouched and traced a finger through the air, feeling the subtle currents. "No rival signatures around it. It could just be empty, or it's a bait. Either way, it's an opportunity."
Arthur peered over the edge, sword resting against his shoulder like a question. "If we take it, we deny them those minutes of accrual. Ten points up front and the per-minute bonus. Worth the risk."
Lucien's voice came through the comms, low and steady. "Arcanum on the island holds range and sight. Martial goes down. Keep a lane open for extraction.
Aurelia nodded, eyes already tracking a route. "We can drop in from above. Surprise is on our side."
She didn't wait for permission. With the sword already in her hand, she stepped off the island and dropped, the air snapping cold at her face as she fell toward the guardian.
The motion was a deliberate gamble that read as daring to the others.
Arthur's voice cut after her. "Do we follow?"
Kael didn't hesitate. "Yes. But not all of us." He turned to the Arcanum stationed on the island, hands moving in a quick, precise signet. "Stay and hold the height. Use range and sight, cover from above, and any enemies that try to stop us." His tone brooked no argument.
"To the rest of the martial division, descend with me. Scholar Wing's as well to destabilize the guardian and claim the node after. Close quarters. Finish fast."
Lysandra's grin widened into a half-laugh as she pushed off the rim and let herself fall with the ease of someone who trusted both sky and body.
Arthur followed more measuredly, sword loose at his side.
Kael shaped Aether around his limbs, and wind shuttered into a current beneath him. He glided rather than plunged, landing with controlled finesse beside Aurelia as she reached the guardian.
Above them, the Arcanum unfurled their spells like banners, arcs of light and threaded bolts meant to harry any approaching enemies and blind watchers.
From the island, the team had height, sight, and the ability to strike anything that came to contest the relic.
On the ground, Aurelia's blade hissed through the guardian's plating, its eyes flared, and it responded with a ripple of static force.
The fight began mid‑air and collapsed into a furious, efficient clash at the relic's feet.
Aurelia's boots skinned the stone as she spun; her blade traced a half-moon that met the guardian's first sweep.
The construct's arm, a grid of basalt and rune-forged iron, crashed where she would have been had she not parried.
The impact sang up her forearms like a bell, consequence without pity.
Around them, the area was alive with movement. Dozens of Arcanum students poured concentrated bolts of light over the guardian's shoulders, Martial Path fighters closed in with ringing strikes to hold its attention, Scholar's Wing apprentices darted between blows, slapping down readied sigils and unpacking rune cartridges that hissed into the air and latched to the rock.
The guardian answered with a grinding chorus of gears.
Runes along its chest flared whenever Lysandra's flames licked at them, the fire didn't scar steel so much as jerk the construct's attention, forcing its motion into a stuttering rhythm.
Lysandra's flame-net wrapped then rolled, not to burn but to sap movement, it was a lullaby that stole momentum.
Nearby, a pair of Martial Path brothers hammered at a knee joint, their strikes opening hairline seams that bled orange sparks.
Arthur moved like a metronome, deliberate, inexorable.
Each stroke folded the guardian's momentum outward, each step reset a tempo Aurelia could read.
Where she lashed and danced, Arthur anchored and drew the machine's balance.
Kael's wind-strokes slipped under plate and stone, jerking feet and catching recoil, small, surgical gusts that left the construct off-balance by mere degrees, enough for others to find opportunities.
Beyond the trio, an Arcanum volley found its mark, a line of light scored across a binding rune and fizzed.
A Scholar's Wing apprentice, a freckled girl whose hand shook but whose slate did not, slapped a rune packet into the ground.
It exploded into a cascade of tiny sigils that crawled up the guardian's flank like ants, each one pinning a rune in place, reducing its circulation of Aether.
Aurelia felt the pattern beneath the chaos. She could see how the guardian fed, not merely guarding the relic but drinking the cavern's ambient flow, weaving those currents into the grid that kept it whole.
If I could slip into the grid that bound those runes to the construct's core, not tear it apart, but ride it, the tethered power would unravel on its own.
She found the same current it was feeding from and folded herself into it, matching its rhythm instead of resisting it.
The blade thrummed in my grasp, the Aether beneath my skin rising to meet the flow, no longer fighting the tide, but becoming it.
Halfway through a flurry, Arthur slipped through a seam the Martial Path had bled open.
He buried his blade and poured crimson Aura into the exposed joint, the metal drank it and sang, ancient temper answering to young blood.
The structure shuddered, and a fissure crawled from his strike.
"Now!" Aurelia shouted, and the battlefield snapped into a single pulse.
She drew a breath and let her Harmonization flow, not to cleave, but to speak.
The sword didn't cut, it sang. Each motion etched a phrase into the woundstone, Aether braided with voice, the harmonics folding perfectly into the guardian's rhythm, turning its own current against itself.
The rune thread around the relic spasmed as if struck, sparks tasted faintly of iron and old snow.
The guardian reeled and retaliated. With a sound like snapped bellows, it unleashed a counterwave of rune-fire that slammed through their line.
Students went flying, Lysandra was lifted and hurled, sputtering, and time hiccupped, for an instant, Aurelia's chest dropped into cold panic.
It was not only Kael who reached her, two Martial Path fighters caught Lysandra mid-tumble and shoved her behind a living shield of interlocked shields.
Kael's hand closed on Lysandra's shoulder, wind wrapping them both in steadiness. "I've got you," he said, low. Other voices echoed the same steadiness as hands pulled limbs straight and checked breaths.
They reformed with cruel speed. The Arcanum on the ridge redirected a volley that met the guardian's discharge and folded it, not as repetition but as a counter-echo that tangled with the construct's own resonance and bled its momentum.
The Scholar's Wing triggered another rune packet, a tight anchoring field that prickled into the guardian's plating and slowed its joint recovery.
Arthur's next sweep aimed to find the convergence where multiple binding lines met.
He drove through, and with a noise like cracked ice, the last binding line snapped.
The guardian shuddered, its core sputtered, runes guttering like spent candles.
Students poured their stored force into the breach: a dozen hands, a hundred minor spells, a chorus of steel and light.
With a final mechanical groan, the construct slumped, its runes going dark, the relic's pulsing light clearing of interference.
Silence dropped for a single, heavy breath, then the area filled with ragged, victorious whoops.
Bloodied, exhausted, laughing, the students clustered, shoulders heaving.
Aurelia lowered her sword, feeling the aftertaste of harmonics and the warm pressure of too many hands on the world's weave.
Around the fallen guardian, the relic pillar transformed from a dull glow to a steady light, its blue fire brightening into a clean, humming flame that reached up and wrapped itself around the Arcane crest.
Victoria's anchors, primed earlier and waiting like a taut string, tripped the instant the guardian died. They wrapped the relic in a stabilizing cage that slowed any attempt to steal it.
The slate-packets all blinked a confirmation: relic secured. Ten points, and the node's timer began: +2 per minute.
Aurelia sank to one knee, blade tip biting the stone, breath shaking.
Lysandra whooped, stamping sparks that were more joy than heat.
Arthur wiped dust from his blade with the edge of his gauntlet, eyes steady.
Kael offered her a hand up, but before she accepted, he looked at her the way he did when they worked late into the night, the look of someone who'd watched you fail and then decided to help you learn the steps back up.
"You did it," he said, almost too softly.
"We did it," Aurelia corrected. The difference tasted like victory and like momentum, not the sudden flare of applause, but the slow accrual of points that could be defended, compounded, turned into an impossible lead.
The slate above them chimed again, and the cavern's scoreboard flickered. Blue sigils pulsed brighter. Arcane Academy had another relic in the bag.
Aurelia let the moment sit a second longer, feeling the Aether around her settle into new patterns.
The node's hum threaded with her own pulse for an instant, a small and private concord.
She felt, absurdly and without apology, like she had moved forward, not just in points, but a step closer to something she'd been chasing in that quiet, dangerous way, a pulse of resonance that might one day answer back with an Aspect.
For now, the scoreboard mattered. For now, they had the relic, the points, and the map in their hands.
Aurelia glanced up at the enormous hourglass hovering above the cavern, watching the grains of golden sand slip endlessly downward.
Eighteen hours remained.
The steady hum of the nodes in the distance filled the silence between the team.
Arcane held the lead now, their total pulsing in radiant blue across the score runes above.
Kael leaned on the wall beside her, slate tucked under one arm, eyes curious. "How did you crack the guardian without the usual runes?" he asked.
Aurelia let a small smile ease past the tightness in her jaw. "Not crack," she said, choosing words with the same care she gave her spells. "I rode it. I found the same current it was using and folded myself into it, matched its rhythm, not opposed it." She tapped the pommel of her sword absently. "It's harmonization, not blunt force."
Lysandra's eyes widened with interest. "Wait, so you think you've reached Stage Three already? Echocraft?"
Aurelia paused, considering it, the echo of the guardian's rhythm still faint in her memory.
For a moment, she had felt something, like hearing her own heartbeat blend with the world's current.
"Possibly," she murmured. "But what about you two? Do you think you've reached Stage Two yet, Embodiment?"
Lysandra's expression brightened immediately. "Definitely," she said without hesitation, flames flickering faintly around her hand as she spoke. "Did you not see how my fire worked against that guardian? It felt alive, like it was responding to me instead of just following commands."
Kael nodded thoughtfully. "I'd say the same. My Aether feels steadier now, like I'm not forcing control anymore. My spells held longer, less fraying at the edges. Maybe I've tightened the weave."
Aurelia gave a small nod, content with their progress. "Then it's safe to say we're improving faster than expected."
Arthur, standing a short distance away, finally broke his silence. "So what now?" he asked, glancing between them. "We've got… what, six points per minute coming in from all three nodes, and eighteen hours still on the clock. That's a solid lead. We could hold steady for a while before the other academies catch up."
Aurelia tilted her head back, exhaling slowly, the exhaustion in her voice betraying her composure. "Now?" she echoed. "Now, I just want to rest."
Arthur blinked, caught off guard. "Rest? Seriously?"
Aurelia half-smiled, sheathing her blade as she sank onto a nearby rock. "After everything that's happened, I think we've earned at least a moment of peace, don't you?"
Arthur hesitated, then awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. "…Yeah, I guess you're right."
Kael cracked his knuckles, eyes lifting briefly toward the floating island above. "The Arcanum division will alert us if anything moves to ambush," he said. "They've got full sight from up there."
He exhaled, watching the faint shimmer of their rune network flicker against the air. "Lucien's probably gotten the memo by now that we've claimed another relic node, our point total's already ticking up. If any of our other teams are affected, the rune packets will notify us. They pulse when they're under pressure."
Lysandra leaned back with a sly smile. "Then let's just sit back and let the other three academies tear each other apart over the nodes. They'll burn through energy and spells while we relax."
Arthur crossed his arms, ever the realist. "If they're fighting to keep or take control, the lead's going to keep flickering between them. Their numbers won't stabilize. Meanwhile, we'll hold steady, four nodes, consistent gain."
Aurelia exhaled. "That's if none of them decide to come after us. But for now… we wait. Recover. Prepare for the next shift."
Kael nodded once, taking command again. "Scholar Wing, set up around the node. Stabilize the perimeter and reinforce the link. I want every rune monitored for fluctuation."