Zelda looked up from the table and went completely still.

When Mark had told her she had visitors, she had assumed it was more survivors needing to be processed, assigned sleeping space, given tasks and folded into the base’s rhythm the way everyone else had been.

She had already been mentally organizing the logistics before she stood up.

Then she saw Winston.

She froze for a moment before crossing the pavilion slowly, like she needed the extra seconds to confirm what her eyes were telling her.

The exhaustion that had settled into her expression over three days dissolved in real time and when she reached him and confirmed it was truly Winston she pulled him into a tight hug, with more force behind it than Winston had expected from her but he returned it regardless.

When she stepped back, her voice was quieter than usual.

"I tried to find you and when I couldn’t. I thought—" She stopped. "It’s good you’re okay."

Winston held a blank expression, but his thoughts were moving fast.

She had tried to find him. That landed harder than he expected. Because when he turned it around honestly, he hadn’t done the same.

The first day he had thought about her. After that, every time the thought came up, he had filed it away, too focused on Mastery, on Soul Burn, on the mechanics of his class, on the next monster.

Always with the quiet assurance that he’d deal with it later.

’If she had died, what would I have done?’

He knew he was capable of overthinking. But he also knew, underneath the rationalization, that he had let the thought of finding her sit at the bottom of his priority list for three days while she had apparently spent that same time terrified he was gone.

Six years of being the only two Fortunates in a class built for prodigies. Six years of being each other’s constant. And he had pushed her to the back.

He exhaled. He’d figure out how to make it up to her, later, properly. For now, he let the moment be what it was.

"It’s good to see you, Zelda." He felt the corner of his mouth pull up. "And it turns out my best friend is a big shot."

Zelda smiled, it was the first real smile she had since entering the gate, although it still had that tired edge.

She pressed the back of her hand quickly to the corners of her eyes before the tears could actually fall.

"I told you. I said I’d be the one looking after you eventually."

"You did say that."

They ran through their handshake without thinking about it, the same sequence they’d built in their first year, ending on a fist bump with thumbs pressed together. Then Zelda noticed Freya.

Her eyes went wide. She had been so locked onto Winston that Freya had simply not registered until now. She turned to Winston slowly.

"Was she the one who saved you from the monsters out there?"

Freya’s expression shifted to something caught between confusion and mild offense. "Saved him from the monsters?" She paused. "The monsters are the ones who needed saving from him."

Zelda looked at Freya. Then back at Winston. "What does that mean?"

Winston smiled.

"You’re not the only one who awakened something powerful."

Zelda’s eyes went wide.

❖❖❖❖

The three of them settled in and talked properly for the first time since the gate had opened.

Freya was the one doing most of the narrating, which surprised Winston. He hadn’t seen this side of her in the three days he had been with her.

She was relaxed and expressive as she recounted the events with a dry humor that matched Zelda’s energy almost immediately.

The two of them fell into a rhythm so naturally that Winston found himself sitting slightly outside the conversation, watching.

"So he took the Giant Tree Troll’s head off in one swing," Freya said. "After shrugging off the hit that sent him through three trees."

Zelda turned to Winston slowly.

"One swing."

"It was a good angle," Winston said.

"I barely left a mark on that thing," Freya continued. "One slash and I wounded it but Winston walks up and removes its head like he’s cutting through air."

Zelda stared at him for another second, then started laughing, the kind that came from relief as much as anything else.

Winston let it go. It was good to hear.

’I can’t believe she awakened a Sacred class.’

That thought had been sitting with him since Zelda had shared her class details, which she had done after Freya shared hers, and after Winston had given Freya a nod to share his as well.

Not that she needed permission, but she had looked at him first out of habit.

As for Zelda her class was called [Impact Mage]. She described it simply, it made her hit harder, and its passive increased her natural strength by a significant margin.

Winston now understood why the hug had nearly cracked his ribs earlier. Then the conversation turned to how she had found the secret realm.

And that was where Zelda’s story genuinely stopped making sense in the best possible way.

’She’s like a protagonist from a story.’

She hadn’t stumbled across it. She hadn’t searched for it. The gate had dropped her directly inside it.

The landing location within a blue gate was random, that was a fixed, fundamental and unchangeable truth.

Dropping someone inside a secret realm specifically was so far outside the probability range that calling it luck barely covered it.

The trial had been a series of questions, which she had answered and cleared.

The questions themselves she couldn’t recall anymore, and Winston believed her completely without needing to activate his Soul Trait.

"And the reward?" Winston asked.

Zelda stood up without answering verbally. She walked to the bed, reached underneath it, and pulled out a large box.

She carried it to the table and set it down in front of them both.

Inside the box were fruits. They were dense and luminous, with each one faintly pulsing with a soft inner glow that had no business coming from something that looked like produce.

Zelda looked at their faces and smiled.

"These were part of the rewards I got, mastery fruits."

Winston and Freya both went silent at exactly the same moment.