My mana slowly recovered during our rest.

Half an hour of sitting was going to buy me back a full pool.

I looked around at the four of them.

Tom had settled beside Kira with his back against the wall, his baton across his lap. Lena had unfolded her arms and taken a spot near the fire.

"Any of you ever heard of this?"

Four heads turned toward me.

"Anything like this. A gate that fits the description of a mutation but has old bones inside. Old anything. Any story your parents told you, any lecture, any rumour. Anything."

Tom shook his head first. "No."

"I haven’t heard of it either. My family isn’t in awakener work. But I’ve read every book the academy library has on gate phenomena for the entrance essays. There’s nothing that matches this." Lena said.

Edgar shook his head without speaking.

Kira drew a slow breath in through her nose.

She’d got some of the colour back into her cheeks in the last few minutes. The tremor had left her hands. Her eyes were sharp again, the pinpoint of her pupils widened back to something closer to normal, and the composed line of her mouth had returned by degrees.

"This is a first of its nature."

"I’ve read the same books Lena has, in fact, I read almost all the available books about this. I’ve read the gate atlas from cover to cover twice. I’ve read the last twenty years of association incident reports that the academy makes available to first-years. There isn’t a single recorded case of a mutated gate containing pre-existing biological material."

She glanced at the bone pile at the back of the chamber.

She looked back at the fire. "We have to be dead careful. We can’t risk it. We might stay here for weeks. Perhaps months, or years...on the condition we survive for that long."

Tom’s face went a shade paler at the duration.

Lena had gone still beside the fire. Edgar’s hand had drifted up to press against his collarbone.

"Kira’s right. We move slow. We don’t take fights we don’t have to take. We don’t split up. We don’t touch anything in this cave or any cave we find that we haven’t checked twice."

I reached into the storage ring and pulled out one of the ration packs. I broke the seal and set it on the flat stone by the fire.

"Eat in small portions. Let’s make sure we are ready for anything. We also have the meat of the beasts we killed earlier, we will use them once we need them."

---

After my mana had finally replenished, I decided that it was time.

"Kira."

She looked up from the fire.

"Come with me. We’re doing a sweep of the immediate area."

She got to her feet without asking why. She’d already read my face across the fire and worked out that I’d picked her on purpose. She dusted the seat of her uniform off, adjusted the strap of her bag, and stepped toward the entrance.

I turned to the other three.

"The three of you stay here. Guard the entrance. Don’t make noise. If something tries to come in, hit it once with everything you’ve got."

Tom nodded from his spot by the wall. Lena tipped her chin at me from the fire. Edgar lifted a hand in acknowledgement.

I picked Kira because she was the only one who could read what we were looking at.

Tom and Lena had both admitted they had nothing to add to the bone problem. Edgar was useful with his wind talent, but he wasn’t as useful as Kira.

It would be better if he stayed with Lena and Tom to help them in case anything went wrong.

Kira had the atlas in her head. If we found a second thing that didn’t fit, she’d know what it meant before I finished describing it.

We stepped out of the cave together.

The cold breeze hit us instantly. Kira pulled her hood up over her hair and tucked her hands into her sleeves.

Reaching into my storage ring, I pulled out a pill I have been saving for Kira, but never had the chance to give it. To me, this was the perfect moment.

Using this pill, will greatly benefit Kira physically and mentally.

The small wooden case sat in my palm, lid open, the pill inside a soft pale white with a thin curl of mana drifting off its surface. The Core Improving Pill I’d been carrying since I completed my last choice.

F-rank to E-rank, according to the label. Useless to me. Useful to two people in my team. Tom, and Kira.

Naturally, I picked Kira. I didn’t nearly trust Tom as much as I trusted the girl coming with me.

"Do you trust me?"

Kira’s eyes moved from the pill to my face. Her hood slid down with the small motion of her head.

"Yes. Of course I do."

"Then take this."

Her fingers hovered over the case for a beat. Her eyes went back down to the pill and stayed there, the small crease between her brows telling me she’d worked out that it was a treasure without knowing which one.

"This is...?"

"You will find out once you eat it."

Kira reached into the case and lifted the pill between her thumb and forefinger. Held it up to what little grey light came off the sky. Turned it once. Then she placed it on her tongue and swallowed.

A moment passed before her entire body turned rigid, her muscles seizing.

Heat rolled up out of her chest so fast I could see it hit her face in a wave. The sweat came a second later, breaking across her forehead and her upper lip in fine beads that the wind froze almost as fast as they surfaced.

Her hand went to her stomach and her knees could no longer carry her.

Before she fell, I caught her by the waist.