Three days before the sparring session was scheduled, Aria had pulled Jason aside in the hallway outside the training room and told him the truth with the directness of someone who had decided that pretending was going to cost more than admitting. "I don't know how to teach," she said. "I genuinely don't know how to do it." Jason looked at her. "You've explained magic concepts to me before," he said. "That's different. You came in knowing things I could build on. Sophie is starting from a completely different place, and the problem she has is one I've never had." Aria crossed her arms, her brow pulling together. "I don't know what it feels like when magic power doesn't move correctly. I never have. Moving it has always been like breathing. You don't explain breathing to someone. You just do it." She looked at him with the rare expression of someone who has hit the edge of their own competence and finds it genuinely uncomfortable. "If I try to mentor her the way a normal mentor w

The weeks between missions moved faster than Jason expected, which meant he had done his job correctly. Aria's separate schedule alone would have been enough to fill a calendar. Circle magic training in the mornings, acting lessons three afternoons a week that she described as character building in the sense that they were building her character's tolerance for humiliation, gaming sessions at night that she refused to compromise on regardless of what else was happening. The Super Hunter K missions layered on top of that, and Jason moved between both tracks without letting either one see the seams of the other. By the time the second mission wrapped and the third was two days away from filming, the first episode of Super Hunter K finally aired on national television. They watched it at Aria's estate, the four of them arranged around the living room with varying degrees of anticipation. Sean had brought snacks he was too nervous to eat. Sophie sat on the floor with her knees pulled

Sophie stood at the base of the mountain trail with her sword at her hip and her score sitting at 33rd place, which was four positions worse than where she had started the day and felt considerably worse than that. The math was not kind. She needed roughly two thousand points to crack the top sixteen and reach the finals. Jake Sanders was already past that number with the easy confidence of someone who had not spent the second mission chasing monsters across a simulated disaster zone while rescue targets burned behind him. She had saved one mannequin. One, out of the full mission count, and only because she had cleared every monster in her section before the last target was destroyed. The fission had done exactly what it always did the moment combat started. It had taken the wheel. The rescue exercise had never stood a chance. "You're doing the math again," Jason said, from beside her. Sophie looked at him. "Is it that obvious?" "You get a specific expression," he said. "Like s

Jason moved down the western slope with the unhurried ease of a person who had decided that being findable was a choice and had chosen otherwise. The cameras mounted along the trail acted as reference points more than obstacles. He had memorized their positions during the morning briefing walk, the same way he had once memorized patrol routes in places where being caught meant something considerably worse than losing a competition. He moved between the coverage gaps naturally, not rushing, not crouching unnecessarily, just walking in the specific way that kept him below the threshold of things worth looking at. He was the only protection target on the entire mountain who had deliberately separated from his hunter and gone wandering alone, and he was aware that this was probably making someone in the monitoring room very unhappy. He found that thought quietly enjoyable. The mountain was beautiful in the particular way of cold places on clear mornings, the frost still sitting on t

Jason was three quarters down the western slope with four bells clipped to his waist, including one that had belonged to a very surprised escort target who had not expected the protection rules to work in both directions, when the wind changed. It was not a change in temperature or direction. It was a change in what the wind was carrying, a quality underneath the cold mountain air that pressed against his senses like a hand on glass. Familiar. Specific. The kind of energy that had a name in the other world and did not have one here because this world had not yet developed the vocabulary for what produced it. He had felt it the moment they arrived at Mount Seorak that morning, faint enough that he had filed it as a possibility rather than a certainty. Now it was not a possibility. An erosive dungeon had formed on this mountain. He stood still for a moment in the brush, the bells quiet at his waist, and let the implications arrange themselves in the order they needed to be in. Er