The electricity erupting in every direction from the point of contact, thunder splitting the air as the bear left the ground.

Not sideways or backwards, exactly straight upwards like a rocket.

The bear went vertical straight towards the sky, its furious roar dopplering upward as it cleared the canopy and disappeared into the sky above the trees, sparks still trailing from its body as it went.

The clearing went quiet.

The portal sat behind where the bear had been, undisturbed, its slow blue rotation completely uninterrupted, not a single inch displaced.

Sylvia landed on one knee, the last of the electricity fading from her body, and breathed once.

"okay.. its Safe now," she said quietly.

The silence that followed had the quality of four people whose brains were still loading.

Celia blinked. "She just..."

"Launched it," Gideon said. "Ninety degree no doubt."

"INTO THE SKY," Nova said, at a volume that was technically still a whisper but was pushing the definition extremely hard. He pointed at Sylvia with a finger, his expression somewhere between awe and genuine alarm. "WHAT KIND OF WILD BEAST ARE YOU."

Sylvia stood up and brushed the dirt from her knees with the calm efficiency of someone tidying up after a minor inconvenience. Her expression hadn’t changed significantly from before she’d hit the bear.

Lucas stared at her.

Almost without deciding to, he activated Mana Perception.

The numbers appeared.

_______________

[Analyzing — Sylvia Silvercrest]

[Strength: 93]

[Mana: 125]

[Magic: Lightning]

[Age: 14]

_______________

He looked at them for a moment, then let the screen fade.

’She’s completely insane as ever,’ he thought, with the particular internal tone of someone arriving at a conclusion they’ve arrived at before and keep arriving at because the evidence keeps presenting itself.

Sylvia turned toward the portal and then looked back at the group over her shoulder, and the small smile that had settled on her lips was the specific one she had when something had gone exactly as she decided it would.

"Now that the annoying problem is handled," she said, gesturing toward the glowing vortex behind her with one hand, "shall we finally leave this island?"

She looked at all of them. "Let’s end this round."

*****

"So this means the second round ends once we go through?" Celia asked, looking at the blue vortex rotating quietly between the trees. Up close the glow of it was warmer than it looked from a distance, the light moving in slow steady pulses like something breathing.

"I’m honestly just glad we found it at all," Gideon said, letting out a breath that carried a week’s worth of accumulated tension in it. "If Sylvia have not taken quick action, we might’ve stuck here forever."

"Can everyone stop talking about it," Sylvia said tiredly, pressing the back of her hand to the back of her neck. "I’m exhausted. Can’t we just get going without talking?" 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Sylvia already moving toward the portal with the purposeful stride of someone who has decided that the next thing on the agenda is rest and nothing is going to stand between her and it. The blue light shifted across her face as she stepped closer, her red hair catching some of the glow.

"I’m going first," she said, and then she walked straight into it.

The vortex rippled once, the light spreading outward from the point of contact like a stone dropped into still water, and then Sylvia was simply gone.

Lucas looked at the space where she’d been.

"She’s gone," he said, mostly to himself.

Nova immediately pointed at the portal with the rekindled energy of someone who has just watched something work and is now significantly more enthusiastic about participating. "Alright. My turn. If this thing drops me somewhere terrible again I’m filing a formal complaint with the academy."

He ran at it.

Not walked, ran, with the full dramatic commitment of a person treating a transportation portal like a finish line, and launched himself into the blue light without slowing down.

Then he disappeared as well.

Celia watched the spot where he’d disappeared and sighed the specific sigh of someone who has accepted a person completely. "Why does he enter everything like he’s storming a fortification?"

"Because confidence is the only thing functioning when his brain steps aside," Gideon said pleasantly.

"I HEARD THAT." Nova’s voice came back through the portal from somewhere else entirely, muffled and indignant and thoroughly Nova. All three of them stared at the vortex for a moment.

"...That’s unsettling," Celia said.

Then she stepped forward and walked into the light and was gone.

Gideon moved next but paused just before the portal’s edge and glanced back at Lucas.

Lucas gave a small nod.

Gideon’s mouth moved into something brief that might have been a smirk, and then he stepped through and the light closed around him.

The forest was quiet again.

Just Lucas and the portal and the sound of the trees settling around him in the wind, the distant ocean completely gone from here, the island holding its breath in the particular way places hold their breath when something is about to end.

He looked at the blue vortex for a moment, watching it rotate with the same steady patience it had maintained through all of it, the bear, the lightning, the chaos of five people arguing in the grass while trying not to get eaten.

"So," he said quietly, to nobody. "This is where the second round ends."

He thought about the island. The crash. The dark place with the throne and the red eyes and his name said like something that had already been decided. The campfire and Sylvia’s voice pulling him back to the present. Her hand on his shoulder.

He thought about the portal sitting in front of him, and what was waiting on the other side of it, and the fact that whatever came next was going to be harder than what came before because it always was.

Then he stopped thinking about it, stepped forward, and walked into the light.