Chapter 56: Aptitude Test (8)
The cave had gone still.
Not the kind of silence that came from fear, but the kind that came before something important.
Like the forest itself had leaned in to listen.
Lucien stood before the flame.
His hair was damp with sweat.
His face smudged with dirt.
His fingers trembled, just a little.
But when he spoke, his voice was steady.
“I know you’re tired.”
He looked at them.
Really looked.
The girl with the singed hair.
The boy with the cracked glasses.
The ones clinging to weapons, the ones shaking in silence, the ones bandaging each other with trembling hands.
“I know you're hungry. Hurt. Some of you probably haven’t slept properly in days. And I know that some part of you, maybe most of you, wants to stay in this cave and pray it all goes away.”
No one spoke.
Lucien took a breath.
“But I’m going to ask you to remember something. Something simple.”
His gaze drifted across the faces before him, catching a flicker of something in each one, suspicion, uncertainty… but also a sliver of curiosity.
“Remember why you’re here.”
He stepped closer to the fire.
The light caught the worn edge of what remained of his shirt.
The torn shoulder.
The scares underneath.
“We all walked into this forest with something. A goal. A dream. A reason we were willing to risk everything to get into Twilight Crown. Maybe it’s family. Maybe it’s pride. Maybe it’s just the belief that we’re meant for something better than what we were handed.”
A quiet murmur swept through the group.
Just a shift in posture.
Just a glance.
But something in the air had changed.
Lucien pressed on.
“And yet, somewhere along the way, between the monsters, the traps, the goddamn statues, some of us forgot what we were fighting for. We started thinking maybe this place was stronger than we were. That maybe this forest… gets to decide who’s worthy and who isn’t.”
He paused.
His voice dropped lower.
“Let me tell you something.”
He stepped closer to the fire.
His tone hardened, sharpened.
“I don’t care who your parents are. I don’t care how many tutors you had. I don’t care how shiny your wand is, or what noble house you crawled out of. There are students who walked into Twilight Crown through golden gates, on bloodline and name alone. Students who never even saw this forest. Who never had to earn their place.”
His voice rose now, raw and bitter and burning with something deep inside.
“Are their dreams more valuable than ours?”
He looked around.
“Are their lives worth more than yours?”
Someone near the fire whispered, “No.”
Lucien’s eyes narrowed.
“Then why should we accept being the ones that get thrown to the wolves?! Why should we be the ones that die forgotten in the dirt while they sit pretty in velvet robes?!”
Now the fire seemed to blaze higher.
Shadows danced violently across the cave walls.
Lucien pointed at them, not accusing, but pleading.
“You! You fought through that forest. You dodged monsters and traps. You broke to make it this far. So tell me, how can anyone say you haven’t earned your place?!”
The girl with the staff looked up.
The boy with the glasses sat straighter.
Someone clenched a fist.
Another wiped a tear.
“I’m not asking you to be a hero,” Lucien said, quieter now.
“I’m not asking you to die for me. Or for this test. But I am asking you to fight. Just one more time.”
He stepped back and spread his arms, as if offering them everything he had left.
“Fight for your dreams. Fight because they matter. Because you matter. Because there’s no way we’ve come this far, survived this much, just to give up in a cave in the middle of nowhere!”
Then, his voice dropped into a near whisper.
The fire popped softly behind him.
“So I’ll ask you only once.”
He looked at each of them.
Met every gaze.
“Do you want to sit here… and lose?”
A pause.
A heartbeat.
“Or do you want to step out there, together, and make a miracle happen?”
***
The cave echoed with the last remnants of Lucien’s voice.
The fire cracked and hissed, the flames casting long shadows against the rough stone walls.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then came the sound of shifting cloth, boots scraping against rock, as one by one, the examinees turned to him.
“So… what is the plan exactly?” someone asked from near the back.
A girl with a singed sleeve leaned forward, brow furrowed.
“You're not seriously thinking we just… walk out there? Down the middle of the yellow brick road?”
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the cave.
Lucien gave a quiet nod.
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
A beat.
“...Are you insane?”
Someone said flatly.
Another voice, nervous, incredulous, followed.
“We’ve seen what’s on that road! Those things, those statues, they’re not just decorations!”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me earlier,” Lucien said, arms crossed, calm and unmoving.
“I said I wasn’t asking anyone to be a hero. I said this was our only real chance. And I meant it.”
He stepped aside, just enough for the firelight to catch on the person sitting quietly against the cave wall.
Balt.
Lucien pointed at him.
“That’s why we’ve got him.”
Balt, who had been dozing in and out of sleep suddenly gained full consciousness.
Slowly, he turned his head, eyes wide.
“...Huh?”
Now every pair of eyes in the cave had locked onto Balt.
The wounded.
The wary.
The skeptics.
All staring.
“Wha- why- what do you mean me?”
He stammered, half-rising before immediately wincing and clutching his leg.
“I have two shattered legs, Lucien!”
Lucien grinned, a glint of mischief- or madness- in his eyes.
“And you’re still the most important person in this entire cave.”
Balt blinked.
“Oh, that’s definitely not comforting.”
Corin leaned forward, his arms resting on his knees.
“I’m listening. This sounds insane. I like it already.”
The others slowly gathered closer.
They formed a loose semicircle around the fire, the weariness in their eyes tempered now by something else, curiosity.
One or two still looked unconvinced.
Another picked at a loose bandage with anxious fingers.
But they were listening.
Even Balt, grumbling under his breath, finally sat up straighter.
“Fine. You have thirty seconds before I decide you’ve completely lost it.”
Lucien looked at them all, his expression sharpening with purpose.
“Good,” he said.
“Because here’s how we’re going to get out of this forest alive, together.”
***
The spiral stairs creaked beneath their boots as the two invigilators ascended the final level of the eastern observation tower.
"Have you heard?"
One said between breaths.
“Something’s happening in the Ruby Sector. The others are saying it’s... I don’t know, strange.”
“Strange?”
The other scoffed.
“After the week we've had, that word’s lost all meaning.”
They finally reached the heavy wooden door that led into the observatory.
Without knocking, they pushed it open, and froze.
Administrator Vaencel was already there, standing at the center of the chamber, his arms crossed behind his back, eyes fixed to the large, enchanted projection hovering in the air before him.
The magical pane shimmered like water suspended midair, a vast map of the Ruby Sector rendered in flowing layers of light, shadow, and motion.
But what caught the invigilators off guard, what made them stop in the doorway, speechless, was not the magic.
It was the look on Vaencel’s face.
The normally stoic administrator, known for his iron restraint and cool dispassion, wore a grin.
Not mocking.
Not cruel.
A grin of honest-to-the-gods delight.
The others in the room were gathered around him, murmuring, whispering, their tones disbelieving, breathless.
“...Is that…?”
“Are they seriously…?”
“No way…”
Down the central Yellow Brick Road of Ruby Sector moved a shimmering dome of translucent mana.
A barrier, massive, mobile, and pulsing with energy.
Inside it: examinees.
Eighteen of them.
Running.
And at the center of that dome, in a sight so absurd it left even veteran instructors speechless, Lucien Crowley trudged forward, carrying another boy on his back.
“Is… is that the crippled boy?”
One invigilator asked.
“Yes,” said Vaencel without turning.
“Balt.”
Balt’s legs, still mangled from his earlier encounter with the guardian statues, dangled uselessly behind Lucien.
But his arms were outstretched, hands raised forward as if gripping an invisible frame.
The dome surrounding the group shimmered brighter with every pulse of mana surging from his fingers.
He was the one holding the barrier up.
And Lucien, dripping with sweat, ropes tied tightly around his shoulders to keep Balt from slipping, was carrying him like a living magical conduit.
The other examinees surrounded them in formation, shoulder to shoulder.
Whenever a guardian statue descended from its pedestal to block the road ahead, the dome would shift.
Just slightly.
Just enough to let one statue in.
Only one.
And as soon as that statue breached the edge of the dome, the barrier would snap shut again, locking the construct inside like a trap.
The reaction from the examinees was instantaneous.
Fire spells, binding roots, enchanted projectiles.
Corin led the charge with those with melee weapons, every time with his monstrous axe, hacking at stone with the grin of a madman and a war cry that echoed into the trees.
The moment the first guardian was shattered, the dome would shift again.
Open.
Allow the second in.
And the process would repeat.
“D-do you see this?”
One of the junior invigilators muttered.
“They’re… they’re baiting the statues in… one at a time…”
Vaencel finally turned to face his staff, his expression unreadable, save for the faint glimmer in his eyes.
“When I was summoned earlier,” he said quietly, “they told me a large number of examinees were gathering in one place. Then they started moving as one. I expected desperation. Chaos. Maybe even a last-ditch stampede.”
He gestured toward the display.
“But this... This is orchestration. Execution. Teamwork. And more than that, trust.”
Another invigilator spoke up, brow furrowed.
“How are they even coordinating this? They’ve had no time to train together. No shared spellbooks. No doctrine.”
“They don’t need it,” Vaencel replied.
“They have a tactician. A commander. And a living engine.”
He pointed.
“Lucien Crowley. Carrying the mage who cannot walk. Guiding the others forward.”
“And that mage,” he continued, “is improvising a continuous, mobile barrier spell that even most graduates struggle to maintain while stationary.”
One of the magical technicians leaned forward.
“But at that strain? At that length of time? He’s going to burn himself out.”
“They all are,” another invigilator whispered.
“This is suicide. That formation will break eventually.”
“Perhaps,” Vaencel murmured.
“But perhaps not. Look again.”
The projection flickered.
Another statue collapsed, its arm shattered, its runic core flickering before extinguishing.
The examinees surged forward again, shouting encouragements, hands reaching to patch holes in the barrier with talismans, sigils, even torn clothes imbued with mana.
Lucien stumbled, but didn’t fall.
Balt screamed in exertion, but didn’t falter.
And the others… they ran.
Not like students.
Not like examinees.
But like comrades in arms.
One of the younger invigilators stared in silence, then spoke: “They’re going to make it, aren’t they?”
“Layered mana reinforcement on a mobile cast... I’ve never seen it executed this efficiently,” one of the academy’s magic technicians whispered.
“And they’re not even coordinated. They’re improvising- on the fly!”
Another observer muttered, “This is suicide.”
Vaencel chuckled under his breath.
“And yet… it’s working.”
He looked back to the magical display.
The dome moved forward again, slower now, the group within it straining under the effort.
The next statue had begun to move.
Others further ahead stirred on their pedestals.
But still, the examinees ran.
“They’re not supposed to do this,” someone else said quietly.
“This test- it’s about individual aptitude.”
Vaencel turned to them, his voice calm, but sharp enough to cut through the haze of awe in the air.
“No,” he said.
“It’s about surviving adversity. About willpower, adaptability, and vision. Look at them again.”
They did.
Each runner inside the dome bore the marks of exhaustion, blood, dirt, ripped uniforms, bruises.
But they moved like one unit.
Even those too weak to fight now carried others.
Those who had nothing left to give still shouted warnings or reinforced weak points in the barrier.
Vaencel didn’t respond for a moment.
Then he exhaled, deep and long, almost like a laugh too heavy to rise to the surface.
“I’ve seen prodigies,” he said.
“I’ve seen savants and legacies and monsters walk through our gates with power spilling from their veins. But I’ve rarely seen something like this.”
“What do you mean?”
Someone asked.
“I mean ‘will’,” Vaencel said.
“Not talent. Not strength. Will. The stubborn, reckless, brilliant determination to make the impossible happen. That is what walks down that road right now.”
The tower fell silent again.
Outside, in the crimson sector of Twilight Crown’s monstrous forest, a dome of shining mana surged forward, carrying with it eighteen foolish, hopeful, half-broken dreamers.
And somehow, against every expectation…
They ran.
Together.
