By the time the sun had climbed over the road, the Royal Academy was just a dark shape at Knox's back, small enough now that he could have blocked it out with a thumb.He sat near the rear of the covered wagon with his travel bag wedged between his boots. The suspended badge was in his pocket, not on his coat. He watched the road unspool behind them, answered when someone spoke to him, and otherwise kept to himself.Now and then his mind went back to the courtyard — Crane under the archway, red to the collar, her mouth open on words that never came. Then he'd catch himself doing it and push it off. Three months, just that and he would get back to her.The wagon carried a mixed load, none of it academy. Two young recruits on their way to a first posting. An older craftsman heading back to some frontier settlement. A woman minding a stack of crates, medicine bound for a garrison clinic by the smell of the packing straw.The recruit across from him kept glancing at the bandages showing

Laura was barely out of earshot before the arguing one rounded on him."Kade Orrow." He didn't offer a hand. His eyes went straight to the suspended badge Knox hadn't bothered to hide anymore. "And I'm not losing fourteen days because they stapled me to an academy washout who did heavens knows what.""Suspended," Knox said. "Not expelled.""You think Blackridge sees a difference?"He didn't, particularly. Out here the word on the paper mattered less than whether you could stand up in a formation, and Kade knew that better than Knox did — which was the whole of why he was angry. His future was tied to three strangers now, and he trusted exactly none of them.Kade called his beast up to make the point for him. An Ironback Ram took shape at his side, broad through the chest, low to the ground, its horns the dark grey of worked iron. It planted its front hooves and the packed dirt gave under them. Strong. Strong enough to haul the weighted standard through the whole course without slowin

Knox woke before the horn, and the first thing he noticed was that his core felt too full.Not the loose, tired feeling of mana come back overnight. It was different—like the room holding his mana had doubled while he slept, then filled itself to the ceiling before he woke. But when he sent a slow circle of mana through his channels, it ran clean, through pathways that had felt packed shut since the arena.The panel surfaced as he tested it.[Delayed Level Advancement Stabilization Complete] [Level Four Core: Stable] [Temporary Mana Restriction Removed] Restriction Source: Damaged Mana Channels / Bond Trauma[Usable Mana Capacity: 200 → 400] [Current Mana: 400/400]He sat with it for a moment. The system had been throttling him. When the breakthrough hit during the inquiry, his channels had been too torn to hold a full Level Four load, so it had locked half his capacity away and only shown him Mana Capacity increased — nothing about how much of it he couldn't reach. He'd been

The supply lane ran along the inside of the eastern wall, and it did not slow down for anyone with an hour to spare.Knox waited behind two handlers arguing over feed weights while Kade, Neris and Tomas drew their gear from the quartermaster. Blackridge handed out rations, rope and a field kit. Everything past that came out of your own pocket.He bought wound-sealing medicine, then a thumb-sized vial for mana-channel strain that cost more than the medicine had. The concentrated feed cost more than both together, and he still took the four-day pouch instead of the two.He counted what came back into his hand on the walk out, then counted it again at the gate. It did not improve the second time.That's the good feed, Ignis said, already working at the bond. The dense one.Four days of it, so don't finish it before we reach the ravine.The pouch is small.The road won't get any shorter either.Knox pulled the cord tight anyway. Ignis sat two percent off crossing over, and everything past

The ape came down for the harness.Kade took the ram in at an angle instead of head-on and hit it across the hip, and the charge turned it, pushed it stumbling toward the opposite wall away from the supplies. The ram's leg started folding under the effort. Kade stayed at its head with both hands on it and made it hold for one more stride.The ape reached for its shelf.Tomas laid the shield flat across that section of the cliff, and the stone came out of the light half a foot closer than it truly was.The ape's good hand closed on nothing and slammed into the barrier instead.The focus went with it.Knox heard it break and the light tore open across the middle and came apart in pieces that didn't fall so much as stop existing. The wolf skidded back on all four legs with its head down and something ran out of its outline, the edges of it going thin and unfinished. Tomas made a noise like something in him had torn.But the barrier had been there for the half-second it needed to be.The