The morning light was pale and thin, filtering through the broken arches of the ruins like scattered gold. Dust motes danced in the beams, and somewhere outside, a bird sang, oblivious to the death that had soaked into the stones the night before.

Amelia sat with her back against a fallen pillar, her knees drawn up to her chest, her silver-violet eyes fixed on the small fire crackling in front of her.

A makeshift pot, hastily scavenged from a fallen knight’s helmet, sat over the flames, its contents bubbling softly. She had no real idea what was in it. Just some random roots she had pulled up near the stream, some dried meat from her pack, and water.

It smelled exactly like something her mother would have labeled "peasant food" and refused to touch. But it was food. That was enough.

Lyssaria sat across from her, propped against a broken column with her jade-green eyes half-closed. Her arm was still wrapped tightly in bandages, but the swelling had finally gone down, and the fractured bone had knitted back together.

It wasn’t fully healed, but she could at least move her fingers without crying out in agony. Her own healing magic had done most of the heavy lifting, and Amelia’s water magic had done the rest.

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

The fire crackled, the suspicious soup bubbled, and somewhere far out in the distance, a monster let out a faint roar that wasn’t close enough to matter.

Leo slept between them, his white hair spread across the stone like spilled milk. His chest rose and fell in slow, steady breaths. He hadn’t moved a single inch since collapsing from his fight. He hadn’t twitched, he hadn’t muttered, and he hadn’t screamed.

He just lay there, completely still, his katana resting right beside him like a loyal guard dog waiting for its master to wake up.

Lyssaria broke the silence first. "...Does he always sleep like that?"

Amelia looked at Leo. His face was pale, his lips were chapped, and there were dark circles under his eyes that made him look like he had aged ten years overnight.

But his expression was peaceful. The sharp, cold edges he wore when he was awake had softened into something almost gentle.

"Not usually," Amelia whispered. "He used to sleep with his sword practically glued to his hand. After he returned from the trial... I don’t know. To be honest, I haven’t watched him sleep since we were children."

"How long ago was that?"

"Years. Before everything fell apart."

Lyssaria nodded slowly, her green eyes thoughtful. She was a high princess, raised in royal courts where every single word was weighed and every gesture was calculated.

But sitting here in the dirt, watching a boy sleep while waiting for helmet-soup to cook, she looked remarkably normal.

"You were childhood friends then, right?"

"Yes." Amelia stirred the pot with a broken stick. "The three of us. Me, Leo, and Arthur. We grew up together, played together, and fought together. We made a lot of big promises to each other that... we ultimately couldn’t keep."

"What happened?"

"Life," Amelia said flatly. "His mana core awakened at a base B-rank, and the whispers started immediately. The nobles labeled him a failure. Instead of leaning on us, he pushed us away. Arthur and I tried everything to reach him, but he completely locked us out. And then..."

She paused, stirring the soup a bit harder. "And then Arthur was chosen by the Goddess, and the gap between us just became too wide."

Lyssaria watched her silently for a moment, her gaze tracking the subtle tension in the girl’s shoulders. "...It must be heavy, standing between the two of them now."

Amelia stared down at the bubbling liquid, her grip tightening on the stick. "It’s just a mess. I care about Arthur. He’s kind, he’s incredibly strong, and he always tries to do the right thing. But everything changed so fast. And Leo..."

She trailed off, her gaze drifting back to his sleeping face. "Leo is... complicated," she whispered, wrapping her arms tighter around her shins.

"He was my absolute best friend. He knew me better than anyone else alive. Then he vanished into thin air, and I spent years being furious at him. Now he’s back, and half the time I don’t even recognize the person standing in front of me. But I still remember who he used to be. And I think... I think that boy is still in there. Somewhere."

Lyssaria let out a small, quiet sigh, her expression turning distant. "Be careful with old ghosts, Amelia. People change when they go through hell. Don’t let your past blind you to the reality of who they are right now."

Amelia stared at her, trying to deflect. "You sound like you’re speaking from experience, Princess."

Lyssaria’s smile faded, her gaze drifting toward the crumbling arches.

"I grew up in a royal court where every single person wanted a piece of me. Power, influence, or heirs. I learned very early that the people who smile the widest are usually the ones holding the blade behind their back. I’ve never been in love. I haven’t even come close. But I’ve watched my older brother fall in and out of it more times than I can count."

She looked back down at Leo. "He talks in his sleep, you know."

Amelia blinked. "What?"

She looked back down at Leo. "He’s been murmuring under his breath for the past hour. Names, mostly. Mom. Dad. Roran. Mia. Someone named Seris? He’s carrying an entire world of secrets we know nothing about."

Amelia opened her mouth, but she couldn’t find any words to answer that.

"I’m not trying to back you into a corner," Lyssaria said, shifting her weight. "I’m just telling you what I heard. What you decide to do with that information is entirely up to you."

The fire crackled. The soup bubbled. Leo slept.

And somewhere in the distance, a monster roared.

_

Leo woke up to the unmistakable smell of a kitchen disaster.

It wasn’t the sharp, acrid smell of burning wood or active smoke. It was the sad, disappointing aroma of someone who had never cooked a meal in their life trying to force ingredients to cooperate.

He slowly blinked his eyes open.

The ceiling above was cracked stone covered in thick green moss. The floor beneath his back was freezing cold. He was still in the ruins.

He hadn’t been moved, and he hadn’t been rescued. His entire body ached, his head throbbed with a vengeance, and his chest burned with every single breath he took. But his core was stable. He was alive, which was a decent start to the morning.

"Ugh," he groaned, his voice incredibly hoarse as he pushed himself up onto his elbows. "Can you two keep it down? Some of us are trying to recover from near-death experiences."

Amelia and Lyssaria both whipped their heads around to look at him. Amelia looked like she had just seen a ghost, while Lyssaria quickly masked her expression.

"You’re awake," Amelia said.

"Clearly." He rubbed his blurry eyes and sniffed the air, wincing. "Seriously, what is that horrible smell?"

"It’s soup."

"That is not soup, Amelia. That is an active war crime."

Lyssaria let out a sudden snort. Amelia glared at him, her cheeks burning.

"I am trying my absolute best here!" she snapped.

"Well, your best is a threat to public health."

He attempted to stand up way too quickly.

The entire world violently tilted to the left, and he had to launch his hand out to grab a nearby stone pillar to steady himself. His legs were shaking like leaves, his arms felt like lead, and his vision swam with black dots.

"You need to sit your ass back down," Lyssaria said, her voice dropping its royal tone.

"I’m fine."

"You are definitely not fine. You used a technique that burned through your mana reserves and nearly killed you. Sit down before you crack your skull open."

Leo looked at the princess. Her green eyes were perfectly steady, completely unblinking. There was a thick layer of battlefield steel beneath her elegant exterior, and she clearly wasn’t afraid to use it. Recognizing a losing battle, he slid back down to the ground with a grunt.

Amelia carefully scooped some of the liquid into a wooden bowl and handed it over. Leo stared down at it. It was a murky brown color, incredibly lumpy, and smelled faintly of a wet garden.

"What exactly am I looking at?" he asked.

"Food."

"It looks like a lethal poison potion."

"Just drink it. It tastes like food."

He cautiously took a tiny sip. His face instantly contorted into a mask of pure disgust. His eyes started watering. He forced himself to swallow, gagging slightly.

"What," he coughed, wiping his mouth, "what did you put in here?"

"I told you, it’s food!"

"Amelia, that wasn’t food. That was a direct, targeted attack on my taste buds."

Lyssaria burst into a genuine laugh — a bright, clear sound that came straight from her chest, completely stripping away her royal mask. "You two really are childhood friends," she giggled, shaking her head. "The rumors didn’t do it justice."

Leo rolled his eyes, turning to the princess. Her arm was still heavily bandaged, but she was sitting upright, her eyes were clear, and she wasn’t dead. That was a massive plus.

"How’s the arm holding up?" he asked.

"Better. Amelia closed the wound, and I handled the bone structure. It’ll suffice."

He nodded. "Good."

Suddenly, his stomach let out a massive, thunderous growl. The sound echoed loudly off the stone walls, completely breaking the serious mood. Amelia instantly raised a judgmental eyebrow at him.

"Move over," he muttered, waving a hand dismissively to hide his embarrassment. "Step away from the fire. Get away from the pot and leave me alone. I’ll make something actually edible."

He stood up, much slower and more careful this time, and hobbled over to the campfire. He looked down into the helmet-pot, then at the extra ingredients scattered across the dirt, and let out a heavy, disappointed sigh.

"Where on earth did you gather these?"

"Right near the stream," Amelia said defensively.

"Amelia, these are literal weeds."

"They are wild herbs!"

"They are common weeds. Look, this one doesn’t even have a mana signature. It’s just grass."

Without hesitation, he dumped her hard work onto the dirt, rinsed the knight’s helmet thoroughly with water from his canteen, and set it aside.

Then he reached into his void pocket, his hand disappearing into a fold of space, and pulled out a small bundle of real supplies. Dried meat, hard bread, a few roots that actually looked edible, and a small pouch of salt.

Amelia’s eyes widened. "Where did you get all that?"

"Candidates who tried to jump me," he said flatly. "They were kind enough to donate their supplies before I sent them packing."

"You stole from them."

"I requisitioned. There’s a difference."

Lyssaria snorted, while Amelia just shook her head in disbelief.

He worked quickly, chopping the meat and roots into small pieces before crumbling the bread into the pot and adding water and salt. His movements were methodical and highly practiced. He had learned to cook in his past life, when he used to live alone.

_

Amelia watched him closely, her eyes tracking his hands, but her mind drifted somewhere else.

She watched the way his shoulders moved under his torn jacket, the way his white hair fell across his forehead, the way his hands — those hands that had held a sword against a monster that should have killed him, moved with such careless precision over something as mundane as food.

He’s different, she thought. But he’s still him. Somewhere underneath all that coldness, he’s still the boy who used to sneak me extra desserts when the cooks weren’t looking.

But I’m different too. And I don’t know if we can ever go back to what we were.

She looked down at her own hands. They were still shaking slightly.

I chose Arthur. I slapped him. I let him disappear without really fighting for him. And now he’s sitting there, making soup, acting like nothing happened.

But I know it’s not nothing.

I know he hasn’t forgiven me. She could see it in the way he didn’t quite meet her eyes, in the way he kept a careful distance even when they were sitting right next to each other.

And I don’t blame him.

I don’t know if I want him to forgive me. I don’t even know if I deserve it. She took a quiet breath. But I can fight beside him. I can watch his back. I can prove that I’m not the same person who gave up on him.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and forced herself to focus on the fire. That’s enough. For now, that’s enough.

Across the fire, Lyssaria rested her chin on her uninjured wrist, watching the scene with quiet amusement. She said nothing. She didn’t need to.

"Anyway," Leo said casually, not looking up as he peeled a clean root with a small dagger. "Have either of you noticed anything weird about this place?"

"Aside from the massive, corrupted knight that nearly turned us into paste?" Amelia asked dryly.

"Aside from that."

Lyssaria shifted her position, her expression turning serious. "My emergency bracer isn’t working at all. I tried to get myself disqualified but I can’t reach a single soul outside the zone."

Amelia quickly tapped her own wrist interface. "Mine is down too. The manual escape function is locked out. The communication channels are blank. Right now, it’s literally just a ticking clock."

Leo simply nodded. He wasn’t surprised in the slightest.

"I saw something specific," he said, throwing the chopped roots into the clean water. "When I drove my blade into that knight’s chest, there was a purple core pulsing deep inside it. It wasn’t natural mana. It felt like something was actively controlling its movements from afar. Like a puppet."

Lyssaria’s face lost all of its color. "You think a Grade 5 rank boss was being controlled by an outside force?"

"I don’t think so, I know so. And it’s not just the monsters," Leo said, finally looking up to meet their eyes.

"I have seen some candidates who went wild and attacked Nyra — their eyes were glowing with that exact same violet hue. Their souls were completely twisted. There is something inside this valley with us. A presence that can slide right into your mind and force your hands to move against your will."

A suffocating silence fell over the ruins.

"The Academy instructors must know," Amelia whispered, her hands trembling. "They have monitors everywhere. They have to see what’s happening."

Leo let out a harsh, bitter snort. "Of course they know. They designed the exam, they hand-picked this Forbidden Zone, and they willingly let thousands of kids walk straight into a meat grinder."

"But why would they do that?"

"To filter the chaff," he answered coldly, stirring the new pot. "They want the weak to die off so the strong are forced to break through their limits. They don’t care about the body count or who gets traumatized along the way. They never have."

Lyssaria’s fingers tightened against her fabric. "My brother Roan..."

"Roan is a monster in his own right. He’ll survive," Leo said bluntly, his tone matter-of-fact. "Knowing him, he’s probably having the time of his life right now, hunting down corrupted squads and laughing like a lunatic. Don’t waste your energy worrying about him."

Lyssaria opened her mouth to argue, but she closed it. He wasn’t wrong.

"So what’s the plan?" Amelia asked, leaning forward.

Leo stirred the pot without thinking, the rich aroma of the soup doing little to calm the storm in his head.

She’s right there. Two feet away. And I still have no goddamn clue what we are to each other.

We were friends once. Best friends. Then we were nothing. Then we were strangers who happened to share a past. Now we’re... what? Allies? Survivors? People who fought the same monster and didn’t die?

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. She was staring into the fire, her silver-violet eyes distant, her lips pressed together in a thin line.

No, I haven’t forgiven her. It would be a complete lie to say I have. She loved Arthur from the start, completely sidelining the fact that she was supposed to be my fiancée.

Even if this version of me doesn’t give a damn about a political engagement, the raw sting of that past-life rejection still feels like an unhealed scar.

He paused, holding a pinch of salt over the steaming water.

But do I hate her? No. That’s a given fact, and I know that much.

Do I like her? No, not really.

I’m just caught in a blank space. It feels entirely hypocritical to hold a massive grudge when I was the one who went full martyr and pushed everyone away first.

We’re both guilty. We’re both broken. And neither of us has the roadmap to fix this.

So maybe I don’t need to figure it out right now. We don’t have to force a relationship, and we don’t need to pretend everything is fine.

We just need to exist in the same space without killing each other.

Just two people who used to mean something to each other, trying to figure out what that means now.

He dropped the salt into the water, watching it dissolve.

Because the plain truth is, I need her. He hated admitting it, even to himself. If she hadn’t been there providing support, that Grade 5 boss would have slaughtered me, go all-out or not. I can’t clear this corrupted valley alone.

I need a squad. I need people I know won’t turn on me. If that means cooperating with her for the sake of survival, then so be it.

That’s enough. That has to be enough.

Let time decide the rest.

He looked up from the fire, his ocean-blue eyes settling into a cold, focused clarity.

"...We stick together," he said firmly. "We move through the valley, find the others who haven’t lost their minds, and group up. Arthur, Roan, Alice, Cordelia — anyone who can still wield a weapon without smiling like a corpse. We track down the source of that purple corruption and kill it."

He looked directly at them, his gaze sharp and serious.

"My skill allows me to see the color of a person’s soul. I can tell exactly who is corrupted and who is safe before they even draw their blade. I can keep us from getting ambushed. But I can’t fight the entire valley by myself."

Amelia stared at him, her silver-violet eyes searching his face. Lyssaria watched them both, staying quiet.

"You’re asking us to blindly trust you," Amelia pointed out softly.

Leo didn’t answer right away. He met her gaze, his ocean-blue eyes completely steady.

"Look," he said, his voice quiet but grounded.

"You don’t have to force yourself to feel okay about this. We both know we can’t go back to how things used to be. We aren’t those kids anymore. But we don’t need to be friends, and we don’t need to fix the past to look out for each other right now. We just need to cooperate to get out of this valley alive."

Amelia’s breath hitched slightly, the directness of his words striking a chord deep inside her.

"So," Leo continued, holding her gaze. "...Are you in, or are you out?"

She remained quiet for a long, heavy second.

She thought about the years of silence, the slap, the gala, and the freezing distance between them. She thought about the knight, and how he had thrown himself between her and certain death without a single moment of hesitation.

He hasn’t forgiven me, she realized, reading the guarded steel in his expression. He’s right. We can’t go back. But he’s willing to build something new, even if it’s just a truce to survive.

She let out a slow, steady breath and nodded her head.

"Okay," she said, her voice turning firm. "I’m in."

Leo immediately turned back to the fire, ladling the fresh soup into the wooden bowls and handing them out.

"Good. Now sit down and eat. We have a lot of things to hunt today."

The new soup tasted infinitely better than Amelia’s disaster. It still tasted a bit like dirt, given the complete lack of spices in a Forbidden Zone, but it was easily enough to get their stats back up.

_

Meanwhile, in a completely different part of the valley...

Three figures burst through a wall of thick bushes and stumbled into a narrow crevice hidden between two massive boulders.

The gap was barely wide enough for a person to squeeze through, and the walls were slick with moss and moisture, but it was the only cover they had seen in miles.

Alice Scarlet hit the rock wall first, her back slamming against the cold stone, her chest heaving, her crimson hair plastered to her forehead with sweat. Her heavy longsword was still strapped across her back, and her amber eyes were wild as she scanned the treeline for any sign of pursuit.

"Fuck," she gasped, bending over and resting her hands on her knees to catch her breath. "Fucking hell."

Cordelia Valerion stumbled in behind her, nearly tripping over a tree root, her strawberry-blonde hair a tangled mess, her emerald eyes wide with exhaustion and something that looked dangerously like homicidal rage.

Her rapier was still tightly clutched in her hand, the blade dark with dried blood, and her once-fine royal traveling clothes were torn, ripped, and thoroughly covered in dark muck and leaves. She looked absolutely nothing like a princess right now.

She looked like a feral woman who wanted to personally murder someone.

Julia Moss crawled in last, her magic staff clutched tightly to her chest, her pale pink hair sticking out in every single direction, her amber eyes darting around like a frightened rabbit.

She was smaller than the other two, far more fragile, and her whole body was trembling like a leaf in a storm.

The crevice was dark and incredibly cramped, barely large enough for the three of them to stand side by side without aggressively rubbing shoulders. Water dripped from somewhere above, landing directly on Julia’s head in steady, annoying drops.

Alice was the first to speak after a long minute of ragged, heavy breathing. "I think—" she wheezed, her lungs burning, "—I think we finally lost them."

"Which ones?" Cordelia asked, her voice dangerously tight, her chest heaving as she wiped a streak of mud off her cheek. "The purple-eyed candidates who tried to gut us, or the giant spider monster that fell out of the sky?"

"Both?" Alice straightened up, wincing at the sharp ache in her ribs. "Does it fucking matter, princess? We’re alive. That’s what counts."

"Barely."

"Hey, barely still counts as a win in my book."

Cordelia’s left eye violently twitched. She had been called "princess" approximately seven hundred times since she had met Alice Scarlet, and each time, the word dripped with more irritating sarcasm than the last.

She was honestly starting to understand why commoners threw things at each other in the streets.

Julia finally stopped shaking long enough to carefully peek out through the narrow gap in the boulders. "I don’t see anyone," she whispered, her voice cracking. "The forest is empty. I think we’re safe. For now."

"Don’t jinx it," Alice and Cordelia snapped at the exact same time.

They instantly glared at each other, sparks practically flying between them. Julia shrank back, trying to absorb herself into the stone wall.

Cordelia took a shaky, furious breath through her nose, completely reached her absolute limit, and let out a very quiet, very venomous whisper.

"It... It was all because of you. You absolute... uncultured... potato!"

Alice’s head snapped around so fast her neck practically popped.

Her jaw dropped, and her amber eyes widened, as she stared at the high princess in total, unadulterated disbelief. She completely forgot they were supposed to be hiding from a murderous horde.

"Did..." Alice gasped in a loud whisper, her shoulders starting to shake as she tried to hold back a laugh. "Did... did you just try to curse at me by calling me a potato?"

Cordelia’s face instantly flushed a dark, furious crimson. "Be quiet! It was an insult!"

"Oh my god, it totally was," Alice giggled, completely thrilled, burying her face in her hands to muffle her snorts.

"The perfect, elegant Princess Cordelia just reached into the deepest, darkest depths of her vocabulary and pulled out potato. The world is officially ending. The seals are breaking."

"I am under an extreme amount of duress!" Cordelia snapped in a harsh whisper, gripping her rapier so hard her knuckles turned white. "And royal etiquette forbids the use of common gutter language!"

Alice puffed out her chest proudly, completely ignoring the danger outside. "Well, you’re in luck, your highness. Want me to teach you some real ones? I have a whole dictionary of them. I can teach you how to insult a man’s entire lineage using only three syllables."

How did my life turn into this? Julia thought, her mind absolutely spiraling into despair as she watched the two of them bicker in the tiny crevice.

How did I get stuck with them? Why is this happening to me? How did we even end up in this absolute nightmare of a situation?

Julia desperately wanted to cry.

They were supposed to be the top elites of the Academy, but right now, they looked like two toddlers arguing in a mud pit, completely oblivious to how they had dragged themselves into this corner in the first place.

_

Author’s Note

I’ve seen a lot of confusion and some strong reactions about the recent Chapters, so let me clear things up once and for all.

There is no love triangle.

Amelia and Arthur are together. That has always been the case. She chose him. Leo is not trying to win her back. He is not pining for her. The tension between Leo and Amelia is not romantic — it is about two childhood friends who drifted apart, hurt each other, and are now trying to figure out how to coexist as allies.

Nothing more.

Seris is the female lead for Leo. That will not change.

This is not a harem story. Leo will not collect love interests like badges. His focus is survival, protecting his family, and preparing for the war to come. Romance is not the priority, and when it does come, it will be with Seris.

So please, stop worrying about love triangles and forced drama. That is not what this story is about.

Thank you for reading, and thank you to those who trust me to tell this story the way it was meant to be told.

Keep reading. The exam arc is far from over.