"What are you doing here?"

Winston raised an eyebrow.

"I heard you needed energy stones. So I brought them."

Mark’s narrowed gaze shifted and the suspicion softened into something closer to surprise.

"You’re the one that brought them all?"

Winston nodded and waited. He had already mapped out how this was going to go.

Mark would doubt him, say something about Winston being at the bottom of the class and a hopeless Fortunate.

Especially how Winston of all people had no business showing up here acting like he’d done something.

Winston hoped for that because he would watch the expression that followed when he put Mark in his place; he just needed a reaction to kick it of.

Unfortunately Mark didn’t follow the script.

"I see." A short pause. "Then we’ll need to take you to the boss." He turned and tilted his head in a follow-me gesture, already moving.

Winston stood still for a half-second longer than necessary.

Freya stepped up beside him.

"What’s the problem?"

"Nothing." He started walking. "He just reacted differently than I expected."

Freya glanced at him, clearly curious about what he had expected, but didn’t push. Winston turned briefly to Josh and the rest of the group.

"We’ll see each other soon."

Josh nodded, and Winston and Freya moved after Mark through the cave.

Behind them, one of the students who had just returned from a collection run stopped and stared at Winston’s back as he disappeared into the crowd.

"Wasn’t that Winston? Why is he walking with Freya Valeria?"

Josh caught it and turned to the student.

"You went to the same academy as him?"

The student nodded slowly, still watching the direction Winston had gone.

"So what was he like?" Josh asked. "Someone that talented, what was it like going to school with him?"

The student blinked. Then let out a short, disbelieving sound.

"Talented? Winston?" He shook his head. "Never thought I’d hear those two words together."

Josh frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, for starters, Winston is a Fortunate."

Josh went still. Drake and Spencer exchanged a look. Carly’s mouth opened slightly.

"Are you sure about that?" Josh asked.

The student gave him a flat look that answered the question without words.

Then he told them everything. Winston was last in the year in the academic section and second to last in the physical section.

How he had struggled with drills that other students completed without thinking, how his results across six years had been so consistently poor that people genuinely questioned whether his Trait Factor test had been accurate in the first place.

A Fortunate with no family bloodline, no natural talent, no obvious reason to expect anything significant from his awakening.

Josh and his teammates listened to all of it without interrupting.

When the student finished, he went on his way without ceremony, leaving the four of them standing there in quiet disbelief.

Carly was the first to say what they were all thinking.

"Do you think he exaggerated?"

Josh considered it. "I’ve never heard of anyone named Winston before today. I’m not saying it’s all true, but someone with that kind of power should be in the top ten of any academy in Key City. He’s not on any list I’ve ever come across."

Tracking the top students from every major academy was standard practice. Knowing who to approach carefully and who to give wide space was basic survival intelligence in their world. Winston wasn’t on any of those lists.

Josh exhaled.

"Either way, what he said, true or not, doesn’t change what actually happened. Winston saved us. His past doesn’t change that."

The other three agreed and left it there.

Ahead of them, Mark was still leading Winston and Freya deeper into the cave, and his thoughts were considerably less settled.

He had clocked Winston first. Then noticed Freya walking directly beside him, not behind him or at a distance, but beside him as an equal. Mark kept his expression controlled.

’What in the world is happening?’

He had awakened an Epic class. By any reasonable measure, this First Entry should have been manageable.

But the monsters in this region had been operating well above anything a fresh initiate was meant to face, and Mark would have been dead on day one without the boss pulling him back from the edge. He exhaled quietly.

’As long as the boss is satisfied, that’s what matters.’

Winston caught the shift in Mark’s energy and activated his Soul Trait without making it obvious. He turned his focus inward and looked.

Mark’s soul burned brighter than most; it was not close to Freya’s contained star-intensity, but clearly above average.

Epic class, which wasn’t surprising. Mark had always sat in the top ten at Nightwing. What Winston hadn’t expected was the emotional state of it.

The soul’s surface fluctuated in quick succession, shock, then acceptance, then something that read clearly as responsibility.

Not arrogance or the casual confidence Mark usually carried around the academy.

Something had changed him in three days.

Winston deactivated the Soul Trait and looked up.

The secret realm spread out around them in full now that they were moving through it properly. The cavern ceiling stretched high overhead, hung with phosphorescent crystals that threw a soft, permanent twilight across everything below.

Dozens of tents had been pitched across the uneven stone floor, clustered in small groups, lanterns visible through the canvas walls.

A functioning settlement, built from nothing in three days by people who had no choice.

At the center of the cavern, a crystalline pond sat perfectly still in the windless air.

On the edge of it close to the cave wall was a small pavilion on a raised platform, draped entirely in layered silk and rough wool, clothes hung from every side to form a sealed enclosure that blocked sight lines completely.

A narrow stone bridge arched across the water to reach it and two people stood guard at the bridge’s base.

Winston recognized both of them immediately. Rebecca Strom, the goth girl who had sat beside Mark on the bus and John Tildo the broad and shaved-headed bruiser with his arms crossed.

Mark’s usual company. They gave Mark a brief nod as he approached. Then they looked at Winston and Freya and nodded again with the same acknowledgment.

Winston filed that away without reacting.

Mark stepped onto the bridge and stopped just outside the pavilion entrance.

"Boss. You have visitors." He waited exactly seven seconds. Then he stepped aside and gestured.

"You can go in."

Winston walked through the hanging fabric without slowing down and Freya followed after him.

Inside was a simple table, a bed pushed against the cave wall and a single lantern. And sitting behind the table, looking up from whatever she had been reading, was someone Winston would have recognized in complete darkness.

"Zelda?"