Gilded Ashes-Chapter 56: Two Days

Raizen and Hikari took the left lane. Keahi and Feris the right. Ichiro and Esen the open spaces in between. Lynea and Arashi the center line.

The arena’s target systems woke properly then - slamming up and down, metal groaning, the whole ground shook a bit for them.

Raizen dashed in, cutting a corner and two targets at the same time. He overcooked his stop and tumbled, rolled, popped up with his palms raised in surrender. Hikari shook her head, smiled, and offered him a hand.

Keahi painted flame arcs that Feris used as guides, swinging her projected mace head through the gaps with growing accuracy. Her range stretched by meters without losing control. She learned to stop the projection right before impact and let the displaced air do the hitting instead. Then she quadrupled the size of the mace head on a whim and knocked a practice wall flat - Kori nodded twice at that.

Ichiro built a moving ramp ahead of Esen’s feet. Stone pillars rising one after another, each one a launchpad. Esen used them like steps - one shockwave, two at a time, three at a clever angle, punching air and blowing up targets into each other from different directions. He learned to pull one shockwave a fraction slower than the other so the two met at exactly the right point. When they missed, Ichiro grew a wall to catch Esen and reshaped it into a ramp again without breaking rhythm.

Lynea set fragment planes in the air and Arashi threaded shots through the gaps between them. Twice, Lynea tied fragments with that razor thread and sliced Keahi’s flame clean in half. She tried cutting one of Arashi’s sparks midflight - it split, and both halves kept homing. She blinked, then grinned.

"My physics is resilient" Arashi said.

"Good" Lynea panted. "Even better."

They took a small break for water.

Feris rolled her shoulders and blew a long breath at the ceiling. "Feels like a real team today, huh?"

"Don’t get soft" Keahi said. "We still have to flatten the other guys."

They went again. Hikari started using her Eon mid-run - quick, messy compared to her usual precision, but the mess worked. Raizen’s dashes started stopping where they were told (Most of them, at least. He ended up kissing more than one wall).

Once, he felt that greedy pull again, the part of him that always wanted more, and nearly pitched forward. But he caught Kori’s flat look, and imediately chose control. He raised one of his blades and let two small bolts tap a target drone’s bottom instead of trying to fry its circuits. Just a second after that, one of Arashi’s fat bullets obliterated the drone, turning it into a small pile of smoking scrap metal.

When Raizen threw him a look, Arashi just shrugged, like he was saying "Look man, I did what I had to do"

Esen missed a clap and both shockwaves went wide. He grimaced, jogged back, reset his hips. The next one cracked so clean it made everyone flinch.

"Sounded like my grandma’s breadboard!" Feris said. "I guess that means it worked"

"Where did you grow up" Arashi asked, "and can we visit?"

Kori let them run around until sweat dripped off noses and legs burned. Then she raised her hand.

Everything stopped.

"Better" her eyes swept over all eight of them. "Good. Now let’s go, the arena isn’t just ours."

Evening had settled over the Academy by the time they left the arena. The corridors were cooler, quieter, lit only by a few light strips running across the ceiling.

They walked together in a loose group, tired and easy, trading half-sentences about who-knows-what.

Then the corridor widened, and four people came the other way.

Raizen recognized them before his brain finished the thought. Ryuu - tall, broad, the dull gleam of metal limbs catching the corridor light. Oren beside him, short and white-haired, hands in his pockets, walking with the unhurried confidence of someone who’d never been in a rush in his life. Keita on the far side, sharp-eyed and quiet.

And Iris. Small. Calm. She walked slightly behind the other three, and when her eyes found the group, she gave a short nod.

Polite, brief, but nothing more.

Nobody spoke. Both groups passed each other in the corridor without a word, without slowing, without stopping. Just the sound of footsteps going in opposite directions.

When they were gone, Esen exhaled. "Well. That was fun."

"I don’t remember them being this tall" Feris muttered.

Keahi’s hand had drifted to her shoulder, near her claymore’s hilt without her noticing. She let it drop.

Kori didn’t say anything until they’d turned two more corners. Then she tilted her head toward a side passage.

"You four. Come with me for a bit. The rest of you - free, until tomorrow."

The park was reasonably small - a circle of grass with young trees wedged between two buildings, lit by a few light posts that gave everything a warm tint. Kori dropped onto a stone bench and stretched her legs. Raizen, Hikari, Keahi, and Ichiro stood in front of her, still cooling down, still carrying the weight of that silent corridor.

Kori looked at them for a moment. Then her voice came out quieter than usual.

"As you already know, they’re second-year royal scholars" she started. "That means they have a full year on you. A full year of training, conditioning, and Eon work that you haven’t even dreamed of yet."

She let that sit.

"More than that - they’ve already started going on missions. Real ones. They’ve seen Nyxes, fought them, come back." Her eyes moved across the four of them, one at a time. "You haven’t. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a weakness, it’s just the truth."

Hikari’s grip on her staff shifted but she didn’t speak.

"You can win" Kori said. "If you are careful, and if you are smart." She held up a finger. "And if you work together. Actually together, not four people standing near each other - one unit, moving as one, thinking as one."

Her expression changed. Something darker settled behind her eyes, and the easy warmth she usually carried went somewhere far away.

"If you don’t..." she said, "you’d need a miracle."

The words landed heavy. Heavier than it should have. Raizen felt it press against his ribs, and he didn’t know why.

Nobody said anything for a few seconds.

Then Kori leaned back on the bench and crossed her arms.

"One more thing" she said. "The second-years - there are actually nine of them."

Raizen frowned. "We’ve only met four."

"Yes" Kori said. "You have."

Feris, who’d been lingering at the edge of the path - close enough to hear, too stubborn to be left behind - stepped forward.

"But shouldn’t they be ten?" she asked. "The entrance exam usually takes ten royal scholars. Every year. Or more, if the results are dangerously close."

Kori looked at her.

She didn’t answer.

The light post buzzed softly above them, casting pale yellow light across the bench, the grass and the five people standing in front of a woman who had just stopped talking.

"There’s something else" Kori said finally. "Their mentor. The person training them."

She paused.

"Yeah? What about him?" Raizen asked.

"It’s a former Phalanx member."

The air went very still.

Raizen looked at Kori - at the woman who had corrected his grips, dragged him into ruins, bullied faculty for extra arena time, stood at the back of every session with her arms folded and her eyes sharp.

A former Phalanx member.

Training the other side. For more than a year.

Raizen kept staring at Kori’s expression, looking for a joke, a prank, anything that would tell him that she wasn’t serious. But for once there was nothing playful in it. No smirk. No tease. Just the steady, unflinching look of someone who understood exactly what she’d just told them and was waiting for them to understand it too.

"Get some sleep" she said. "Tomorrow we prepare."

She stood, stretched again, and walked back toward the Academy without looking back.