The Exam

We decided not to talk about it. Not now. Focus had to be directed on what lay ahead—the exam.

We moved through the undergrowth in a diamond formation. Thalia on point, Calixtus and Eleanor watching the flanks, and me covering the rear.

The trees still towered, but now they looked real again—gnarled, rough, honest in their shadows. The lightless green mist curled low to the ground, yet the air was breathable. Palpably alive.

We were no longer being pulled.

Now we were walking.

After about twenty minutes, Thalia raised her hand in a signal to halt.

Then we heard it.

A low growl, deep and guttural. Not the kind that echoed—the kind that settled into the bones.

Branches rustled ahead. A shape moved behind the fog.

Four-legged.

Long-limbed.

Flesh tight over muscle. A humanoid torso twisted over a lupine lower half. Its spine jutted out like jagged bone plating, each step unnaturally smooth. A long tongue flicked from its mouth—testing scent.

It stalked just beyond the brush.

Calixtus muttered under his breath, "Quadraclaw."

Eleanor nodded. "Exactly from the databooks. Mana-hound variant. Partial humanoid adaptation."

I narrowed my eyes.

Speed-based. Low armor. Excellent trackers. Weak to precise pressure—joints, throat, spine.

We'd trained for this.

Thalia stepped back slightly. "One target. Not pack behavior. Must've been separated."

It stepped into full view. Snout twitching, pale eyes locked onto us.

Its claws flexed.

Then it charged.

"Calixtus—flank left. Eleanor—brace for interception. Thalia, disorient it if you can."

They moved without question.

Thalia immediately cast a shockwave beneath one of its legs, the sonic vibration unbalancing its momentum.

Calixtus burst upward from the ground beneath it, his upper body phasing through the moss and roots just long enough to wrap both arms around one of the creature's hind legs.

"Gotcha."

He solidified—just for a second—then dragged it down, destabilizing the beast's charge and yanking its lower half into the terrain like a snare sprung shut.

The Quadraclaw howled—half-submerged, limbs flailing, spine twisting against the pull.

Eleanor jumped forward and leapt onto its back, grabbing hold of its head—one hand on the front, the other behind the skull.

Two sharpened bone spikes erupted from her palms—

And pierced straight through.

The creature gave one last jerk—then went limp.

I didn't have to do anything this time.

"Well done," I said calmly. "Now let's find shelter. And resources."

"Don't jinx it, please, Kaelen," Calixtus muttered, half-grinning.

We all laughed.

Just for a moment.

It was time to continue.

We moved through the brush, but my thoughts weren't on the trees.

They were on them.

Calixtus joked too much—but behind it, he adapted faster than anyone I'd seen. Reliable. Just reckless. And smart. Too smart. He could read people like open texts. When I lie, he's the one I have to be careful around.

Thalia was sharp. Clean execution. Precise control. More valuable than I expected. If she kept this up, she'd be a real asset to her House.

Eleanor… strong, but shaken. Not in the body. In the mind. Fear clung to her in ways it didn't to the rest of us. If something cracked, it'd start there.

Then I heard it.

Faint—too faint for most. But there.

Footsteps. Off-pattern.

"Stop," I said.

The others froze. No hesitation.

Thalia tilted her head, listening intently. Her eyes narrowed. "Surrounded," she whispered. "Close. More than ten."

Calixtus rolled his shoulder. "Great. Friends?"

"No," I said.

Not friends.

They came into view: mana-hungry hounds.

Bigger than a person, dark fur, sharp teeth, and a mana-draining aura.

Fighting them for long wasn't smart.

They weren't going to wait before attacking; they were rabid to the bone.

I decided I'd be the one to move first.

It was time to finally start activating a bit more than just raw mana.

No Seed did not mean no abilities.

Boom… I launched myself at perfect timing, seemingly like a teleport, but it was just insane speed. Only possible for people with tremendous mana control and explosive muscle capability. Historically, people without a Seed.

As I drew close to one,…it turned its head—too late.

I struck low, shifting my weight and dropping under its center of gravity. My knee drove upward, slamming into its ribcage. It released a pained growl. Mana drained from its body just to stay upright.

Before it could counter, I moved again—perfect flow snapping through my limbs. Left elbow into the neck. A flicker of suppressed mana detonated on impact. The beast spun mid-air and crashed into a tree.

Three more bounded toward me.

Fast. Not clever.

I ducked under the first, letting its jaws scrape nothing but mist. My hand caught its fur—dense, rotted with old mana. I pulled, redirected its weight, and slammed it into the second one mid-pounce.

The third leapt.

Big mistake.

I leapt too—straight up—and twisted in the air. My heel met the top of its skull with force enough to crater the ground beneath it on impact.

Mana-starved or not, they still had nerves. Still had bones.

Still breakable.

Behind me, the others were already moving. Eleanor summoned spikes of hardened bone, skewering a charging hound through the jaw. Thalia blasted a high-frequency pulse—disorienting one just long enough for Calixtus to phase through and break its spine from within.

But more were coming.

I landed and crouched low.

"Regroup," I called. "Fast and clean. We don't drag this out."

"Eleanor, I'll herd them in. Full-body spike burst."

Immediately I rushed, circling them around, Eleanor tracking my movements with great precision.

She exploded her bone spikes in an instant of raw brutality.

Blood spewed across the ground.

Three left.

Calixtus faced one head-on. He phased his arm out—then brought it back mid-swing, using the momentum to smash the hound's head in.

He stood over the collapsed creature, shaking the blood from his hand.

He glanced at us with a crooked grin.

"Gonna go ahead and call that one Phasebreaker," he said. "Trademark pending."

Thalia snorted. "You're insufferable."

Then she snapped her fingers—once, twice, three times. The air rippled and layered resonance tore outward, blasting the next hound back.

That wasn't just precision anymore. Her pulses were too refined—too deliberate. Her Seed was nearing Impera.

Not there yet, but close. And reaching Impera before eighteen? Almost unheard of.

The last one vanished—just for a moment.

Then we heard it. A low, wet crunch.

Its form reappeared in the mist, and something was wrong.

Every corpse—the hounds we'd killed—was being devoured. Not by teeth. Not by mana absorption.

They were unraveling. Eaten from a distance. Bone, sinew, flesh—peeled away in invisible bites.

Actual consumption.

Its form warped. Limbs stretching, snapping, regrowing. Its spine bulged with jagged spikes. A rib pierced through its own side and didn't retract.

"That's not a normal hound," Eleanor whispered.

It was ravenous. Huge. The pressure it gave off was suffocating—dense, volatile. More than just a beast.

We spread out, each taking a side.

Eleanor summoned a hammer of dense bone—grown straight from her arm—and charged.

The hound moved first.

It kicked.

A single kick, and she flew backward like a ragdoll, crashing into a tree. The impact cracked the trunk clean through.

She had her exoskeleton active. That she stood up at all was proof of its strength—but even that looked like it hurt.

It focused on her.

Big mistake.

I surged forward, targeting its rear leg.

Mana coiled through me—timed perfectly, controlled to the twitch. Every muscle fired in sequence.

One strike.

Colossus Punch.

My fist collided with its rear leg at full momentum. The entire limb detonated on impact—bone and muscle flung into the trees like debris from an explosion.

It roared, the sound ringing through our ears.

Calixtus appeared above it and started striking at its eyes.

At that moment, Thalia shouted:

"BACK AWAY, I FELT A FREQUENCY IN MY BONES!"

Something was charging—a ball of raw mana, not external but internal, buried deep in its chest, glowing through the cracks in its flesh.

Not a defense.

A suicide burst.

It was going to detonate.

Were the Instructors going to intervene?

Was it over?

No.

I flashed to Thalia and Eleanor, grabbing both.

"Calixtus—phase out. Now."

Full speed. No hesitation. I bolted, carrying them as far as I could.

Behind us, the hound exploded.

A wave of blinding mana tore through the forest. It grazed me—barely. I pushed every thread of energy into defense.

When the wind settled—

I was standing.

So were they.

We beat it.

We took a moment to gather our thoughts.

"God… that thing was an Alpha Hound, wasn't it?" Eleanor said, breathless.

I nodded. "An Alpha, yeah. Mutated. Rare variant. Even in the Veiled Forest, you're not supposed to see them."

Calixtus phased in a few meters away, brushing ash from his sleeve. "So basically, we pulled the one in a thousand."

Thalia exhaled sharply. "Figures. Our luck's impeccable."

We moved in silence after that.

The forest around us seemed quieter—like even the trees had witnessed the explosion and decided to stay still. Broken trunks smoldered behind us, and ash clung to our clothes like proof.

No one spoke for a while.

Eventually, I glanced back. Thalia walked with her arms crossed, expression distant but focused. Her resonance had deepened—more than just pulses now. It carried shape. She was close to Impera. Third stage of refinement.

Eleanor was limping but upright. Mid-Root stage—technically, Radix. Her control was improving. Her reaction time had sharpened. That hammer strike—reckless, yes—but it showed intent. Conviction. Something I wasn't sure she still had. Maybe she could push past the fear after all.

Calixtus moved with practiced ease, but he kept adjusting his shoulder—the one he'd used to phase-strike the hound's eye. Still early Radix. That was the cost of House Angelus' obsession with Seed evolution. More niche, less refined. But he made it work.

And me?

I didn't have a Seed. No stage to refine. No element to bend.

I could hold my mana still now—suppress it, control it. But to harden it? To forge it into something internal and self-sustaining? That was another beast entirely.

Null State was a distant thing.

And it would stay that way. At least for now.

But I was learning. There were more uses to raw mana than I'd realized.

If I let my flow stagger—intentionally ragged—it created a rhythm perfect for barrages. Inconsistent pressure, overwhelming tempo.

Or like with the hound—when I compressed and released everything at the exact moment of impact. The timing turned it from a punch into something else entirely. A wave. A tidal force. Mana crashing like a tsunami against the body.

There was more.

I'd started vibrating my hand—fast enough to generate a thin, spinning layer of mana along the edge. Hard to control, but it turned my hand into a razor.

"Kaelen, what are you doing?" Eleanor asked, a little concerned.

"Nothing," I said. "Just practicing."

"Right," she muttered. "Totally normal behavior."

Calixtus, walking behind, butted in. "What are you guys chatting about? Include us—we're bored over here."

Thalia didn't even turn. "Maybe if you didn't trail ten paces behind like some ghost, you'd be included."

And then we saw it.

A river—wide and slow, its current gentle enough that it almost resembled a lake. The water was clear near the edges, darkening toward the center, and the surrounding trees bent slightly inward as if they, too, had paused to rest.

It was perfect.

Shelter. Water. A chance to breathe.

We headed toward it without a word.

"Finally something good," Thalia muttered, exhaling a deep breath. She listened for sounds one last time before letting herself relax.

"Maybe we're not cursed after all," Calixtus added.

The river lapped quietly at the shore, unbothered by our presence.

The first day of the exam was ending—and for once, the silence wasn't hostile.