The morning training was trying to kill him.

Two wind crescents came in fast and low, and Aries dropped before he’d consciously decided to. Both passed over him close enough that one clipped his hair, hit the tree behind him, and cut it cleanly in half.

The top fell through its own leaves. The bottom stood there for a moment, then accepted what had happened to it.

Aries looked at it from the dirt.

’Third session. One second slower and that would’ve been the end of me.’

He got up, brushed his sleeve, and kept going.

"You okay?" Valea was already heading toward him, concern replacing the confidence from a moment ago.

"Yeah," he said. "Barely."

From the edge of the clearing, Nico stood with folded arms. "Better than yesterday," he said. "The brat may be slightly less hopeless than expected."

Coming from Nico, this was a standing ovation.

"You say that," Valea turned on him immediately, "like you weren’t standing there with your jaw on the floor during the fireball."

"I was focused."

"You looked like you’d seen something unbelievable."

"I multitask."

Cedric’s single clap cut through both of them.

Everyone turned. Kivi sat at his side in the morning light.

"There’s a reason we stopped here before Ashton," Cedric said. "A magical beast has been spotted in this forest. Unusual classification, but worth pursuing."

"Haah?" Valea pointing her index finger. "Not again! You literally have Kivi! She’s standing right there!" She pointed at Kivi with the energy of someone presenting hard evidence in court. "What more could you possibly need?"

Kivi’s ears folded back slowly. Her large eyes went soft. She looked — in the way only genuinely dignified animals can — like someone had said something unkind about her in front of company.

Eren winced just watching it. "Her feelings are actually hurt."

"No — Kivi — that’s not—" Whatever composure Cedric normally maintained immediately collapsed.

He was looking at Kivi and gesturing at multiple things simultaneously, actual sweat at his temple. "I didn’t mean you weren’t enough, I would never — Kivi, look at me, I’m talking to you specifically—"

"What a scum," Nico said.

"That crossed the line!"

After a pause long enough for Cedric to locate his dignity and dust it off, he straightened, cleared his throat, and started over. "What I meant was — one of you could keep it. As your own companion."

"I’m in."

All three of them, said it in exact, perfect unison.

Aries looked between them.

’They can never agree on anything. How is this the one exception?’

"What does it look like?" Valea was already leaning forward.

"Palm-sized. Crystal feathers all over the body, two ribbon-shaped tails, moves by hopping on bursts of its own wind mana," Cedric said. "Quite rare."

Valea’s hands moved slowly toward her face. The expression she wore had left the territory of normal expressions entirely. "That," she said, in a low and completely serious voice, "is actually illegal. It should not be allowed to exist."

"Sounds like something from a children’s gift shop," Nico said.

"Why is it rare if it’s so small?" Eren tilted his head.

Cedric smiled the way someone smiles when they’ve been waiting for exactly that question. "Because it steals mana from anyone it touches."

The clearing went quiet.

Valea’s hands lowered from her face. Eren stopped leaning forward. Even Kivi appeared to be reconsidering her earlier judgment on all of them from scratch.

They split at the treeline. Cedric and Kivi west, Nico and Eren south, Aries and Valea east into the morning.

The trees closed around them in layers. Camp sounds faded. Just the two of them, boots on dirt, and light dropping through the canopy in broken shifting pieces.

"You should be easier on Nico," Aries said, after a while.

Valea looked at him the way you look at someone who’s said something questionable. "I’m sorry?"

"The two of you spend most of every day insulting each other. Seems like a lot of energy to keep up."

"That guy barks at literally everything," she said. "Always in everyone’s business, always finding new ways to be annoying."

"Sure." He shrugged. "I agree with you."

She blinked. Clearly hadn’t expected that.

The forest thickened the further they went, roots cresting through the path, canopy overhead breaking the light into uneven patches.

Something small moved through the undergrowth ahead and didn’t bother showing itself.

"How deep do we need to go?" he asked.

"No idea. My legs have already filed a formal complaint with whoever’s in charge."

Then her expression changed entirely. She clasped both hands together mid-walk.

"But imagine if we’re the ones who find it," she said, picking up. "Tiny crystal feathers. Huge glowing eyes. And it just hops straight into my hands—" She did a slow spin between two trees, arms out, completely somewhere else. "Fwip-fwip-fwip, right into my lap, and then it decides I’m its person and stays forever and we’re best friends—"

Aries watched her.

’A child,’ he thought. ’One hundred percent still a child.’

A branch broke behind them. Then another. Then the rushing sound of something large moving through undergrowth fast.

Valea’s hand found his sleeve before he’d processed what the sound meant.

She went left and threw him right, wind erupting from her feet in the same motion, and three things crashed through the treeline into the clearing they’d been standing in.

Elk, roughly. The hide was black and plated, textured like armor rather than anything living. The antlers were enormous and ran with heat — molten orange lines tracing through the bone, burning from inside out.

The wind pressure of their passing hit Aries even from where he’d landed. Two of the creatures wheeled toward Valea.

’Shit. I guess we are gonna get separated.’

The third cut directly between them with its head down, trees splintering in its path, and the forest closed between him and her.

She was just gone.

He ran. Direction was secondary, away from several hundred kilograms of armored animal with fire for bones was enough direction.

The ground sloped under him.

He cleared roots and pushed through brush until the sounds behind him faded and stopped, leaving nothing but his own breathing.

He slowed. Looked around.

Ahead, half-swallowed by hanging vines and a shelf of stone, was the entrance to a cave.

’A cave? He looked at it. ’Looks even scarier than those things.’

He went in anyway, because standing in the open hoping for the best wasn’t a strategy.

The cold hit immediately and stayed. His footsteps changed against the stone floor.

Forest sounds peeled away layer by layer until there was nothing but the cave, his own breathing, and somewhere deep inside, the slow patient drip of water.

The passage opened.

The chamber beyond was wide, the floor curving gently downward.

Symbols had been carved across every wall, deep and deliberate, too consistent to be anything but intentional.

Faint blue light pulsed slowly through them, mana running through old channels when someone passes through it.

Aries stood at the entrance and looked at the walls.

Then underneath all of it, a sound rang his ears.

He followed it to the far wall.

The man sat with his back against the stone, legs out in front of him. Clothes torn open at the chest, dark stains through the fabric dried at the edges, still wet near the center.

Head down. Chest rising and falling like he’d just come back from somewhere very bad.

Aries crouched beside him and put a hand carefully on his shoulder. "Hey. Can you hear me? What happened?"

A moment passed.

Then the man moved slowly, lifting his head up one degree at a time until he was looking up.

The horns came first. Two of them, curved and dark, growing from the skull the way something grows when it has always been there.

Then the eyes.

Something in Aries’s chest went still before his brain could name why. Wrong color at the iris. Wrong shape at the pupil.

Not human.