Chapter 41The Headmaster's private chambers sat at the academy's highest tower, reached by a spiral staircase that seemed to climb longer than the tower's height should have allowed, and Ethan arrived at the heavy oak door with Ash padding silent at his side despite the proctor's instruction to come alone."He comes with me," Ethan said, when the proctor opened his mouth to object. "Or neither of us comes."The proctor studied Ash's star-marked fur a moment longer, something wary flickering behind his composed expression, then simply nodded and pushed the door open without further argument.The chamber beyond was smaller than Ethan expected, warm firelight instead of the cold, institutional brightness that filled most of the academy's administrative spaces. Shelves lined every wall, packed dense with books and scrolls and strange, softly glowing artifacts Ethan didn't recognize. An old man sat behind a modest desk near the fire, silver hair longer than most instructors wore it, face

# Chapter 43They met on the training grounds the next morning, an uneasy triangle of distance between them—Ethan and Lyra on one side, Cassian deliberately positioned several feet apart, dragon curled tight and watchful around his shoulders."Let's establish something immediately," Cassian said, before either of them could open with anything resembling strategy. "I lead. I'm A-rank. Neither of you outranks me on paper, whatever your gauntlet performance suggests.""Rank doesn't win fights," Ethan said. "Coordination does.""Spoken like someone who's never had actual rank to rely on.""Enough." Lyra's voice cut flat and cold between them, Luna's frost crystallizing faintly across the grass in a visible display of her own mounting irritation. "We have three days. I'd rather spend them training than listening to the two of you compare rank like it means anything once the match actually starts."Cassian's jaw tightened, but he didn't argue further, which Ethan took as the closest thing t

Chapter 45The night before semi-finals, Ethan found Lyra alone on the training grounds well past curfew, sitting cross-legged in the grass with Luna curled silent beside her, staring up at a sky empty of the strange violet dark that had marked Ash's evolution weeks ago."Couldn't sleep either?" he asked, settling down beside her, Ash and Nyx trailing quiet behind him."Haven't tried yet." She didn't look over, gaze fixed somewhere distant. "Semi-finals are against Royal Knights Academy. They field the second-best summoner program in the region, behind us. I keep running scenarios and none of them feel certain enough."Ethan recognized the particular tension in her voice—not simple pre-match nerves, something older and more deeply rooted underneath it. He'd seen it before, in smaller flashes: the way she drilled Luna's control sequences with an intensity that bordered on obsessive, the way her composure cracked hardest not at danger but at the suggestion of losing control entirely."

Chapter 47Lyra waited until the infirmary had settled into quiet that evening—Bramble sedated and stable, Cassian's dragon resting in the adjacent recovery ward, the worst of the day's adrenaline finally drained from all of them—before she pulled Ethan aside into an empty corridor, the small scanning crystal still clutched tight in her hand."Luna's been acting strange since the semi-final," she said without preamble. "Not injured-strange. Different-strange." She held up the crystal, its surface still faintly glowing. "I ran a standard diagnostic scan on her after the match. Standard procedure, nothing unusual. Except the readout wasn't standard at all."She handed him the crystal. Ethan turned it over, squinting at the shifting text across its surface.**[SUBJECT: LUNA — FROST FOX]****[BASE CLASSIFICATION: S-RANK — CONFIRMED]****[ANOMALY DETECTED: MINOR TRAIT DRIFT]****[PROBABLE CAUSE: PROLONGED PROXIMITY TO UNCLASSIFIED ENTITY]**"Trait drift," Ethan repeated slowly. "What does

Chapter 49The war-hound's next charge came fast and brutal, armor-plated shoulders lowered for a collision Team Fourteen had no healthy beast left to properly absorb. Ethan made the call in the space between one heartbeat and the next, old caution burning away beneath pure, desperate necessity."Ash—when it closes, let it hit you. Don't dodge."Violet eyes flicked toward him, a question passing silent through the bond, and Ethan answered it the only way he could."Trust me."The war-hound's charge connected solid, driving Ash backward across the arena floor in a spray of dust, and in that exact moment of contact—teeth and claw meeting fur and flesh—Ethan reached for something he'd never consciously tried to activate at range before, something the system had only ever shown him through cores held deliberately, physically close.**[DEVOUR & EVOLVE: MANUAL ACTIVATION ATTEMPTED]****[TARGET: WAR-HOUND TRAIT SIGNATURE — ARMOR RESISTANCE]****[WARNING: UNCONVENTIONAL EXTRACTION METHOD]***