“I count seven,” Lira whispered, lifting her hand toward the camp below. “One in the tree on the southern edge, looking north. Two patrolling clockwise. The other four are set around the fire.”

  Her breath fogged in the cold night air, drifting like pale smoke. Down below, the campfire snapped and spat, throwing broken shadows across the clearing. Even from this distance, the men didn’t move like drunks or highway scum. Their posture was wrong— they were alert and deliberate. They watched the dark the way wolves watch the treeline: patient, hungry, waiting to see what would step into their teeth.

  We crouched along the ridge, brush tugging at our cloaks, the scent of wet pine thick enough to taste. Crates sat stacked beside a broken wagon, its wheels cracked from being dragged off the road. The tarp hung in ribbons, clawed open as if something inside had tried to escape.

  “The Guild tracked the caravan raids here,” I murmured, letting my eyes follow the rhythm of their patrol—each step, each pause, every predictable shift of weight. “Merchants. Guards. They didn’t leave survivors. They won’t come peacefully.”

  “The Guild gave us clearance for kill on sight,” Lira said, eyes narrowing to slits. “These men are dangerous.”

  “There’s only seven,” Merric whispered with a grin that didn’t belong in a place like this. “We fought twice that on the way to Verrinport.”

  Elaria elbowed the exact shoulder that still gave him trouble. He winced instantly.

  “And that’s exactly why you took an arrow to the shoulder,” she muttered.

  Merric sucked in a sharp breath. “Okay, okay—point made.”

  “Merric,” I said quietly, “don’t take them lightly.”

  For once, he didn’t argue.

  I studied the clearing again: the angle of the firelight, the sentry’s line of sight, the patrol’s thirty-five-second loop. The way the shadows stretched when the flames guttered. The cleanest paths. The dead ones.

  “Lira takes the sentry,” I whispered. “Merric and I pull the patrol behind the wagon and drop them quietly. After that, we collapse on the four at the fire. Fast and silent.”

  “Good plan,” Lira said. She rose smoothly, her movement barely a ripple in the dark. She always seemed to belong to moments like this. “Let’s move.”

  We slid down from the ridge. The cold air thickened as the forest swallowed us whole, branches knitting overhead until the moonlight became thin and scattered. Water dripped from the pines and pattered across our hoods.

  Leaves cushioned our steps. Mud softened the sound further. The wagon loomed above Merric and me as we circled wide—its cracked beams jutting like ribs, the shadow it cast deep enough to hide a dozen bodies.

  Across the clearing, Lira melted into the darkness beside a fallen pine. I could barely see her, but I felt the faint shift of Essence as she shaped her sigil, lethal intention forming in her palms.

  We waited.

  Seconds stretched.

  The fire cracked lazily.

  The patrol walked their slow arc.

  Their shadows grew long as they crossed in front of the tents. Merric nudged a patch of wet leaves with the toe of his boot. Just a brushing sound. Barely anything.

  But the patrol heard it.

  Both men froze. Hands drifted to their hilts. One murmured something I couldn’t make out. The other nodded once.

  Then they moved toward us—slow, controlled steps, each sinking into the mud with a soft, wet noise.

  I steadied my breath and counted their approach.

  Three steps.

  Two.

  One.

  The nearest man stepped into the wagon’s shadow. I rose in a single motion and drove my blade between his ribs. The steel punched through his lung, cutting off his scream before it formed. His breath rattled in my grasp as I lowered him gently into the mud.

  A heartbeat passed.

  Then another.

  I looked toward the tree.

  The sentry hung limp against the trunk, Lira’s hydro dart buried cleanly at the base of his skull. No sound. No struggle.

  I turned back just as a sharp cry split the clearing.

  Merric’s hammer had connected—but low, hitting collarbone instead of skull. The man staggered, consciousness flashing in his eyes. He sucked in a breath, the beginning of a scream.

  I moved before he could shape it. My blade sliced up beneath his jaw and into the base of his skull. He dropped instantly.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The forest went still.

  Then—bootsteps, hard and quick, cutting through mud and pine needles.

  Three figures rounded the wagon, firelight washing over their faces. One saw the bodies at our feet and froze. His expression twisted—fear, rage, something feral flickering in his eyes.

  He lifted his hand.

  A sigil flared to life in his palm, bright and sharp enough to cut through the dark.

  “Down!” I shouted.

  The fireball detonated outward, flooding the clearing with a roar of heat and orange light.

  These weren’t bandits.

  They were rogue arcanists.

  The fireball shrieked past us and slammed into a pine behind the ridge, blowing bark across the clearing. Heat rolled over my cheek as the remaining four rogues fell into formation—two big men stepping forward, broad frames shielding the casters behind them.

  Another sigil flared in the caster’s hand. He hurled it.

  I raised my blade and swept the flame aside, sparks crawling down the steel.

  Somewhere behind the vanguards, a splash of cold light cracked through the night—Lira’s water sigil catching someone’s shoulder. A shout followed, raw with pain. Their formation wavered.

  “Merric,” I muttered, already moving.

  We broke from cover at the same moment—Merric barreling toward the left vanguard, me angling toward the right. The man met me with a greatsword that looked like it needed two hands, but he swung it as if it weighed nothing. My first strike glanced off his blade, the impact jarring up my arm.

  He shoved me back with a burst of earth-augmented strength. The ground trembled under my boots as he began forming another sigil, threads of stone gathering in his palm.

  I didn’t wait. I rolled left, feet digging into mud, circling around his dominant side. His arm was raised just high enough.

  I cut upwards in a quick arc.

  Bone parted beneath my blade.

  His forearm hit the dirt with a sick, heavy thud.

  He roared—more fury than pain—and swung the greatsword one-handed, the weight of it cleaving the air above my head. I ducked, feeling the wind shear over my hair, then caught a boot to the jaw. The kick snapped my head back and sent me tumbling across wet leaves.

  I spat blood, pushed up, and saw him trying to wrap the bleeding stump with a scrap of cloth. His breath came ragged, but he was already lifting the sword again.

  A scream ripped across the clearing.

  Merric’s hammer tore free of the other vanguard’s skull with a wet crack. He exhaled hard, shoulders heaving, then sprinted toward the casters Lira was keeping pinned down. Spells collided behind me—water, flame, the hiss of steam, Merric’s roar cutting through it.

  The one-armed brute charged me again, raising his sword high overhead. I stepped aside from the downward chop—felt the ground quake from the force—and wove a quick flame sigil around my fist.

  My punch landed square in his chest, the sigil detonating.

  Heat and force blasted through him, sending him skidding back through mud and pine needles.

  The vanguard was still struggling to find his footing when I launched an arc of wind.

  He raised his sword to catch it—but was off-balance, no weight behind the guard.

  My wind split the blade cleanly and kept going, finding flesh on the other side.

  His eyes widened. A red line blossomed across his torso. Then his body came apart with it, folding into the earth in a heavy slump.

  Behind me, the clearing crackled with sigils. I turned in time to see Lira fling a crescent of water at one of the remaining casters. The man countered with a flame sphere. The collision burst in a plume of steam that swallowed them both for a heartbeat.

  When the mist cleared, the rogue was gasping, shoulders hitching with every breath. Lira was already forming more sigils—three this time, threads taut around her fingers.

  He tried to answer with another pattern, but his energy was spent.

  Her water crescents carved into him before he could finish, dropping him in pieces that hit the forest floor with wet finality.

  Merric was still locked with the last caster, batting away wind darts with the flat of his hammer. Sigils flared in the woman’s hands again and again, her panic rising with each one. She didn’t notice the thin spirals of water forming at Lira’s side until four drills shot across the clearing.

  They punched through her legs in an instant.

  The woman collapsed, screaming as Essence fizzled in her palm. She tried to crawl, dragging herself backward, blood darkening the mud in streaks.

  “Elaria,” Lira called, her voice cold as the night air, “preserve her life. We’ll take her in for questioning.”

  The clearing finally stilled.

  Only the crackle of dying fire and the soft rush of steam remained.

  Elaria slipped to the wounded girl’s side with practiced urgency, hands already glowing as she pressed her palms to the shredded mess of muscle and skin. The rogue hissed, swinging wildly at her, but the attempt ended with a sharp thud—the pommel of Lira’s sword striking her temple with cold precision.

  “Enough,” Lira said, voice like a drawn blade. She sheathed her sword in one smooth motion and watched as Elaria secured the girl’s wrists with a healer’s knot.

  “Calm down,” Elaria murmured. “I’m trying to stop the bleeding.”

  “Oh, that’s adorable.” The rogue let out a ragged laugh. “You patch me up after your little ice princess here carved holes in my legs? Sure. Makes perfect sense,” she said, twisting against the bindings.

  “This is the consequence of your actions,” Lira said evenly. “You preyed on caravans. You put yourself here.”

  The girl’s glare sharpened. “Spoken like someone who’s never missed a meal.” She spat blood into the dirt. “You nobles love pretending your morals are pure. You didn’t grow up scraping for coin or watching your siblings starve. The whole system was rigged against people like us. And you—” her eyes flicked to me “—you people killed my friends like they were animals.”

  My jaw throbbed where the vanguard’s strike had landed. “Nothing you’ve gone through justifies murdering innocent people.”

  “Innocent?” She barked a bitter laugh. “Those caravans you’re so desperate to protect gouged prices so high they made entire villages choke. They traded bread for blood. We did what we had to do to survive. Same as you. You just did your killing with a shiny Guild stamp.”

  The weight of her words hung there heavily.

  While we spoke, Merric had been in the back of the wagon, sifting through crates. “I’m seeing water, cloth, dried meat.” He held up a child’s wooden horse with its leg snapped clean off. “Doesn’t look like anything planned, just desperation.”

  He tossed it back into the pile before he jumped down from the wagon, his expression harder than usual. “You attacked civilians. That’s what separates us.”

  As I walked toward Merric, I saw a crate of newly forged swords. Drawing my own, I ran my thumb along my battered blade. The edge was chipped, the metal tired. I thought for a moment, then picked up one of the newer blades. It felt wrong in my hands, like it knew it didn’t belong to me.

  “I don’t think this mission ever had a deeper meaning,” I said quietly. “Just a group of failed Arcanists taking their bitterness out on whoever couldn’t fight back.”

  The rogue looked away, jaw trembling with a fury that had nowhere left to go.

  Her words still lingered in the back of my mind.

  If I hadn’t passed the Adventurer’s exam… if I’d been thrown out before I ever had a chance…

  What would I have become?

  The question dug its claws in and refused to let go.