Ronan forced himself upright with a pained groan.

He’d rested for long enough, and the barrier was starting to move inwards. His soul wouldn’t heal itself this quickly, which meant that he just had to deal with it.

The dizziness was instant, and Ronan almost fell over. But he forced himself upright.

He could not stay here. He scanned the area, his eyes searching. He found it near the base of a neighboring tree, a single violet thorn, almost invisible against the dark bark.

Then he saw another one.

That was the trail of Aura’s magic he’d originally been following before he ran into the group.

Ronan sighed, and followed the trail deeper into the center.

—

The main hall echoed with a cacophony of shouts, gasps, and groans. Hundreds of students, spared from the selection battle royale, crowded around the suspended mana projections, their faces illuminated by the shifting scenes of combat. A roar went up as Jason Novark, with a single, devastating swing of his greatsword, eliminated a powerful foe. Those who had betted on him cheered while those who didn’t despaired.

Victoria Ashbourne sat apart from the loudest of the crowds, alone with a textbook on runes set aside on the chair next to her. She’d set it aside to pay attention to the screen in front of her.

She was not watching like the others.

She stared at the screen showing her brother’s feed, her eyes wide, her posture unnaturally still.

"How did he do that?" she murmured, the words so quiet they were lost in the surrounding noise.

She was not talking about the fight. The physical combat, the usage of skills, the ambushes – those were impressive for his rank, but understandable. She was talking about the runes.

Ronan had created them too quickly. Not as quickly as she could, of course – that would be impossible. But the speed was absurd for a Rank 2 mage who had only formally begun studying runic theory a few weeks ago. The structure itself was crude, a messy five-point array that sacrificed stability for raw output, but it was functional. More than functional. He had placed it under immense pressure, with little to no time. However he had done it, and they had all worked.

Victoria’s mind replayed the sequence.

But then came the part she did not understand.

First, Ronan, following Kade’s group from the shadows. His stealth was imperfect, but his pathing was logical. He was caught. Expected.

Then, the interrogation. Ronan, pretending to be pressured, his body language a carefully constructed performance of fear. His answers were deflections, leading Kade down a path of false assumptions. He claimed he had found a capture point. A lie, but a plausible one.

Victoria had seen the trap forming then. A simple lure. She had almost dismissed it. A basic tactic.

Then she saw the part that made no sense.

Kade walked forward alone, his focus entirely on the gnarled oak tree Ronan had indicated. His four companions, who had maintained a perfect diamond formation moments before, did not follow. They did not maintain their guard. They simply... stopped, their attention drifting, their formation breaking without a single command or reaction. It was as if, for a critical moment, their perception of the world had been edited. Kade was no longer their priority. The surrounding forest was no longer a threat. Their leader walked into a trap, and they watched him go as if he were taking a casual stroll.

That was not ordinary rune work.

Then Ronan bent down to "tie his shoes."

Victoria expected a crude hand activation. A hidden gesture. A delayed mana thread.

Instead, the trap activated from his shoe.

An activation rune. Inscribed on his boot.

When did he place that there?

She rewound the feed again in her mind, her memory crystal-clear. He had not drawn it during the confrontation; his hands had been empty, held where Kade’s group could see them. Kade, an assassin, would have noticed the shift in mana, the movement of a finger tracing a symbol. She would have noticed. That meant Ronan had prepared it earlier, or inscribed it in a moment so subtle, so perfectly integrated into his natural movements, that even the high-fidelity projection feed had failed to capture it.

The explosion went off.

Ronan eliminated the group, dismantled Kade, and secured his points.

The students around Victoria reacted loudly to the sudden reversal.

She barely heard them.

She watched Ronan’s figure on the screen. He was wounded, a gash on his arm bleeding freely, his breathing heavy. But his expression was composed. He swept the area with a final, clinical glance, confirmed his victory, and then turned. He did not linger. He did not celebrate. He immediately returned to the trail he had been following before Kade’s group ever appeared.

Her heart was beating faster than it should.

The sensation was foreign. Unpleasant. It was the frantic, uncontrolled rhythm of anxiety. She had felt it before, in the deep hours of the night when a complex rune refused to work, and she had a deadline to work off of. But this was different. This was not the frustration of a researcher hitting a wall. Victoria Ashbourne, whose world revolved around theorems, equations, and runes, felt a tinge of anxiety watching her little brother’s performance. Not boredom. Not academic interest.

She felt actually anxious. Invested, even.

She thought of Irene, of the frantic report her sister had given after the duel with Brutas. The worry in her voice that Victoria had dismissed.

"He’s not the same, Victoria. It’s not just that he’s stronger. It’s... something else. Something’s wrong."

She stared at the projection as Ronan’s figure disappeared into the dense trees, his form swallowed by the shadows. The failed noble son, the lazy disgrace, the boy she had deemed unworthy of her time – that person was gone.

In his place was someone that she honestly couldn’t understand.

Victoria leaned forward in her seat slightly, watching the screen with intent.

Is this what she was talking about?