Chapter 71: Three Days

The selected Advanced Training students gathered before sunrise at the edge of the academy grounds, and the cold air smelled of pine and wet stone. Their usual uniforms had been swapped for plain trial gear, and instructors moved down the line inspecting packs, pulling out phones and any item they considered unnecessary. The instructor waited until the last pack had been checked and then gave the rules. The trial would last three days in a wilderness environment, with limited supplies and no instructors inside the course, and every student had to reach the extraction point. The objective itself would not be revealed beforehand.

Roxanne looked at the enormous forest beyond the boundary, dark and unbroken under the paling sky. "We’re actually doing this for three days?" she said quietly.

Liam adjusted the straps on his pack with a satisfied air. "I packed snacks," he said. Lucien turned his head and looked at him. "They confiscated them," he said, and Liam’s face fell as he patted his pockets and found them empty. He looked personally betrayed, and Jace had to turn away to hide his laughter.

The students were divided into teams, and the names were read out one group at a time. Roxanne listened for the Moonstones and realized that none of the four would be on her team. She was assigned to Elias and two other Advanced Training students, a quiet boy named Corin and a sharp-eyed girl called Maren. Kai was placed on a different team altogether, and across the clearing his eyes found hers and held.

"Stay alert," he said, and the words carried easily in the quiet. Roxanne smirked. "You too," she said. It was a small exchange, but neither of them was trying to control the other, and that was exactly why it felt the way it did.

The teams were released one after another, and for the first hour everything felt almost fun. They crossed a cold stream on slick stones, climbed a rocky shelf on their hands and knees, and followed marked scents while working out which of their supplies would be useful. When they reached the first obstacle, a steep gully with two possible ways around it, Roxanne stopped and studied both. Elias didn’t challenge her this time, and he only asked what her call was. She gave him the route, and he nodded and followed it, which said a good deal about how far they had come since their first tracking exercise.

By midmorning the academy’s first trick appeared. Two paths split away from a boulder field, and one of them carried a strong, obvious scent that pulled at all four of them at once. Roxanne crouched and breathed it in, and something bothered her about how clean it was. There was no wind drift and no broken edges, only a smooth line laid down for the sake of being followed. She told the others it was bait and led them along a narrower way through the rocks.

They found another team stuck in a clearing beyond the false checkpoint, circling the same dead end with growing frustration. Roxanne stopped at the edge of the trees. Her own objective lay in the opposite direction, and helping them would cost her time she wasn’t sure she had. She decided to help anyway, but she didn’t simply solve it for them. "You’re following the strongest scent," she said. "That’s exactly what they wanted." The team leader stared at her for a moment and then understood, and they turned toward the narrow route without another word.

The first night was quieter. The students built a rough camp beneath an overhanging rock, sharing a small fire and passing around dried rations, and the forest settled into a low hum of insects around them. For the first time since the trial began, Roxanne actually missed the academy. She thought about Isla and her stubborn kindness, then Liam’s ridiculous jokes and Roshan’s habit of noticing when she was tired. Lucien was always checking that everyone had what they needed, and Kai’s voice kept returning to her, telling her to stay alert. She caught herself smiling at the fire.

Elias noticed. He was sitting across from her, sharpening a knife against a flat stone, and he tilted his head. "Thinking about someone?" he asked. Roxanne looked at him at once and said she wasn’t, in a voice that was a little too quick. He didn’t push, and he went back to his knife with the ghost of a smile.

Far across the forest, Kai’s team had found one of the academy’s markers, a wooden post with a colored ribbon tied around it. The ribbon was disturbed, and the ground around the post had been scuffed in a way that didn’t match the instructors’ setup. Kai didn’t assume danger. He crouched and examined the marks carefully, tracing the edge of a footprint that was too large and too deep for any student.

"Leave it," Lucien said from behind him, and Kai glanced toward the direction Roxanne’s team had gone. "I know," he said, and he stood and let the post alone. His expression stayed serious for the rest of the evening, and he didn’t say why.

On the second day, the terrain turned difficult without warning. Roxanne’s team was picking its way along a narrow ledge above a ravine when the slope above them shifted, and a controlled rockslide poured across the path with a roar. She threw herself against the cliff wall and felt the dust and gravel rush past, and when it cleared she was alone on the near side of the fall. Elias and the others were gone.

She wasn’t terrified, only annoyed. She stood up, coughing dust out of her lungs, and began tracking her team along the ledge. Her senses came alive around her the way they had during the night exercise, and she heard movement somewhere below, then voices. The urge to rush toward them was strong. Instead she remembered Roshan’s advice and narrowed her focus, one scent, one sound, one thing at a time. She followed Elias’s trail first, a faint mix of cedar soap and steel, and it led her down a goat path to a shelf where he stood waiting with Corin and Maren. All three of them looked up in relief.

By the time they were together again, the sun had dropped low and red behind the trees, and everyone was exhausted. They sat on a flat rock to share water. Then a horn sounded somewhere deep in the forest, and all four of them froze.

Elias looked at her. "Was that part of the exercise?" he asked.

Roxanne listened. Another horn sounded, farther off than the first, and then a third. The instructor’s briefing had mentioned only one signal, a single horn that meant extraction, and this was three. She turned toward the dark line of trees and shook her head. "It wasn’t," she said. All across the forest, teams were already beginning to move toward the same unknown sound.