Chapter 95
Ellie POV
The mountain watches us long before we reach it.
By the time we gather at the clearing at its base, the air has turned sharp enough to sting when I inhale too deeply. Cold clings low to the ground, seeping up through the soles of my boots, settling into my calves.
Even in daylight, jackets are necessary, the fabric pulled close, collars turned up, hands shoved into pockets for warmth that never quite holds.
The clearing it’s self is massive, open like a cold window to the wind.
It’s wide enough to fit the entire two academys, ringed in uneven stone and towering pines that loom. The mountain rises behind us in a long, slanted climb of gray rock and stubborn scrub, its peak lost in low, drifting cloud. Ahead, the land falls away into a shallow valley, where a river cuts a silver line through dark earth. Beyond that-farther than I like to look-the forest begins.
I shiver.
Students cluster together in uneasy groups, healers and management students intermingled but not quite blend. Voices overlap in confused murmurs. Someone laughs too loudly. Someone else rubs their hands together, breath fogging faintly in the air.
No one knows why we’re here, just know we were told to be.
Professor Nel steps forward, boots crunching against frost-kissed grass, her presence snapping the clearing into something like order.
“Alright students, I’m sure you have questions and I’m here to answer them. This is your final trial in our exercise,” she
announces.
The words ripple outward over the head, quieting them.
“Yesterday you complete two smaller trials based on if you where healer or management. Today, we blend. This will be a large scale, multi-part terrain exercise,” she continues. “You’ll be working together-management and healers as a single unit Like a real pack.”
My eyes narrow. I feel like… I’ve done this. The memories slower and slower to come back.
“Roles,” she explains, “will be assigned within teams. Leadership is decided amongst you. Decisions will have consequences. Speed will matter-but accuracy more so. You’re final trial? A game of telephone.”
A rush of hush whispers erupt.
“The first runner at the top of the mountain will receive a single message. That message must be carried unchangest Ro point to point across the course of the terrain. One student will start up top. Exchange it to another who will cross the valley Another will take the message through the river. The final runner will pass through the forest and deliver it to the destructory waiting below.
If the message matches the original closely enough, and the team’s time is fast, they win”
Simple
On paper
People began to cheer, excited, a physical based competition with room hut sabota
Great
My gaze drits past the mountain, past the river’> glinting sila pael tha
你
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The trees stand shoulder to shoulder, dark and thick, their branches tangled high above like a ceiling built to swallow light. I can almost hear it-the hush, the way sound disappears once you step beneath the canopy.
Déjà vu hits hard and sudden.
Right. I have stood here before.
Not exactly here, but close enough that my chest tightens anyway. In my past life, this was where a few things began to unravel. This was the event that crowned Vivian without question, on Dominic’s team they had won, and that marked her rise as
inevitable all at once.
And me?
I’d ended up in a pit fall trap I never saw coming.
Someone had dug it deliberately. Covered it carefully.
Looking around, I tried to spot my wickedly blonde sister. She’d been…quiet after the midterm.
That didn’t make me feel better.
I swallow and force myself to breathe slowly, grounding myself in the cold, the smell of pine and stone, the rough texture of my gloves against my palms.
Whatever she was up to, I wasn’t about to repeat the same mistakes.
As teams are assigned and instructors call out names, I keep my eyes open and my feet planted firmly on solid ground, already mapping what I will avoid.
The mountain wasn’t bad. But the sheer climbs required more then just stacked physical strength. One I didn’t have the stamina
for.
The valley seemed easy enough. But from what I remembered, it was covered in surprise brambles, saw grass, and poisonous
vines.
And the forest…well I’d rather avoid that memory.
That left the lake-
“Ellie!”
The teacher called my name, running towards my apparent new group.
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