Inside the director’s office, the floating screens filled the room with movement different groups of cadets across different islands, each one showing a completely different approach to the same problem. Some were already mid-fight with each other, apparently deciding competition was the answer. Some had found timber and were lashing it together into something vaguely raft-shaped. Others were sitting in groups looking at the ocean with the particular stillness of people who had no idea where to start and were hoping the answer would arrive on its own.

Vance stood with his arms folded, moving his attention between screens.

"I’ll admit it," he said after a while. "This year’s cadets are adapting considerably faster than the previous group."

One screen shifted to show Lucas’s team moving through dense forest, staying in formation, Sylvia at the front with the others close behind.

Vance’s eyes narrowed slightly. "Though there’s one thing I still don’t understand." He glanced toward Beatrice. "The assigned roles. Leader, Strategist, Observer, Coordinator, Assistant. Why include any of that at all?"

Beatrice had her arms folded and was looking at the screens with the specific calm she had when things were going approximately as expected. A faint smile sat on her lips.

"To confuse them," she said simply.

Vance raised an eyebrow.

"The moment people hear assigned roles, they start limiting themselves to the labels," she continued, her voice unhurried. "Leaders focus only on commanding. Strategists focus only on plans. Everyone settles into their title and starts believing the test is about performing that title well." She tilted her head slightly. "But the actual purpose of this round has nothing to do with roles."

Vance looked at her.

"Then what is it about?"

Beatrice’s eyes moved back to the screens. "Whether they can think clearly without instructions. Whether they cooperate under pressure without someone telling them how. Whether they read a situation and respond to what it actually is rather than what they were told to expect." She paused briefly. "Cadets who follow their assigned title blindly will spend the entire round waiting for clarity that never comes. The ones who question the situation itself and adapt to what they find those are the ones who move forward." 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Vance was quiet for a moment.

"So the roles were bait," he said.

"In a way," Beatrice agreed, with the particular satisfaction of someone who designed a thing and is watching it work.

He didn’t say anything further, but his eyes stayed on that screen a little longer than the others.

*****

Deep in the forest, the trees had gotten thicker and the sunlight came through in narrow strips that moved across the ground as the wind shifted the canopy overhead.

Nova was negotiating with his own body.

"Lucas," he said, from somewhere behind the group, his voice carrying the specific weight of someone making a formal complaint to management. "Where exactly are we going."

Lucas kept walking.

"And more importantly," Nova continued, gaining volume, "what are we even looking for at this point."

"Keep moving for another hour," Lucas said, without slowing.

Nova stopped walking entirely.

"Another HOUR."

The birds in the nearby trees made their opinions on the volume known by leaving.

"I am currently conducting active negotiations with my legs," Nova announced, pointing at Lucas’s back with the finger of someone lodging an official grievance. "My soul has already arrived at the destination. My body is filing for an extension."

Lucas’s attention was on the forest around him, his eyes moving across the trees, the ground, the light coming through the canopy at different angles. He registered Nova’s voice the way you register background noise that is consistent and familiar — present, acknowledged, not requiring a response.

’There has to be something here.’

The academy didn’t build a round without building a way through it. Every test they’d run had logic underneath it, the hemisphere mechanic, the manipulation angle, even the cruise going down. None of it was random. Which meant somewhere on this island, or on the islands around it, there were clues that pointed toward the answer. He just had to find what connected them.

’If the goal is returning to the academy, there has to be a mechanism for it. Something placed deliberately. Something that can’t be stumbled into by accident but can be found by someone looking in the right direction.’

He was still turning it over when the roar came through the forest.

Deep and enormous, the kind of sound that moves through your chest before your ears process it properly. Every member of the group stopped moving at the same instant.

"What," Celia said.

They turned together toward the source.

In a clearing ahead, between the trees, something very large was standing.

The bear was massive in the way that suggested the word massive was working harder than usual to carry the meaning. Its dark body filled the space between the trees on either side of the clearing, its claws sinking into the earth with each slow shift of weight, its breath coming out rough and heavy in the forest air.

Nova stared at it for a long moment.

"Of course," he said, with the exhausted resignation of someone who has stopped being surprised by bad news and is simply cataloguing it. "We already have enough going on and the island comes with bonus troubles. Excellent."

"We avoid it," Lucas said, scanning the clearing. "We don’t need an unnecessary fight right now. Let’s go around."

The others started adjusting their path, stepping carefully, keeping their movement slow and deliberate to avoid drawing the creature’s attention.

"Wait."

Sylvia’s voice stopped everyone.

It had a specific quality of focus in the way she got when something had caught her attention and she was deciding what to do with it.

The group turned toward her.

Her eyes were fixed past the bear, toward the far edge of the clearing. A faint crackle of lightning moved between her fingers as she focused, the way it did sometimes when she was pushing her vision further than normal sight.

"There’s something behind it," she said quietly.

Everyone looked again, more carefully this time.

Through the gap beneath the bear’s massive body, at the far side of the clearing, a faint light rotated slowly in the air. Blue-white, soft, turning in a steady unhurried circle that had nothing natural about it.

Gideon leaned forward slightly. "She’s right. I didn’t see it at first."

Lucas focused on it, trying to read the shape and the quality of the glow from the distance. "What is that exactly?"

"Strong mana," Sylvia said. "Whatever it is, the concentration coming off it is significant."

Celia had gone quiet beside them, her eyes moving over the glowing shape with the focused expression of someone matching what she was seeing to something she’d seen before.

"That’s a portal," she said.

Everyone looked at her.

"A transport portal," she said, more certain now. "My father used them when traveling between noble territories. Advanced transportation magic instead of covering distance normally, you step through and arrive somewhere else instantly." She looked back toward the glow. "I’ve only seen one once, but I’m sure that’s what it is."

Nova’s exhaustion evaporated in approximately one second.

"Wait." He straightened up to his full height, something bright coming into his expression. "An instant travel portal." He looked between the others. "Hidden on an island we were stranded on, without instructions, and told to figure out how to get back ourselves." He clasped both hands together. "Are we saying what I think we’re saying?"

Lucas was already connecting it, the pieces moving together cleanly.

"The academy wants us to find our own way back," Sylvia said quietly, "That’s the round. That’s always been the round."

"Yes," Lucas said.

The relief that moved through the group was immediate and visible — shoulders dropping, expressions shifting, the specific release of tension that comes from finally having a direction after walking without one.

Nova put both fists in the air. "I knew following Lucas around for hours was going to pay off eventually. We are genuinely brilliant people."

"You complained every five minutes," Gideon said.

"It wasn’t."

Lucas was not listening to this.

His eyes had stayed on the portal, and on the thing standing between them and it, and a problem was assembling itself in his head that the group’s relief hadn’t accounted for yet.

"There’s still a problem," he said.

The conversation stopped.

Everyone looked at him.

Lucas pointed toward the bear.

It had shifted its weight while they were talking, one massive claw coming down against the earth hard enough to send a tremor through the ground under their feet.

And the portal was sitting directly behind it, close enough that the edge of a large enough attack would reach it without trying.

"If we fight that carelessly," Lucas said slowly, "there’s a real chance the portal gets destroyed in the middle of it. And if it does, we don’t know if there’s another one anywhere on this island. Or how long it would take to find it if there is."

The relief from a moment ago went somewhere quieter.

Nova’s fists came back down.

Celia’s expression tightened.

The answer to the round was right there in front of them, barely fifty meters away, visible and real and glowing.

And the one approach none of them could afford was the one they were best at.