For ten minutes, nothing but wind and the hish of boots in grass. Then, too soon, really, an impact. The leftmost twin yelped, blade knocked from her hand by a flicker in the rain mist.

Soren dropped, flattening into cover, and watched the hyper-clean formation of Blue Company sweep in: Cassian on the lead, Aria close behind, and then the rest in chevron, using the mist as tactical cover.

He signaled, small and sharp. The transfer and Kale peeled off, went to ground behind a fallen arch. Seren, unbidden, shifted left, Soren almost missed her in the gray, but now she had a clean line of sight on Cassian's advance.

Soren waited for the bait to work. Cassian, true to form, hit the exposed flank with all the overcommitment of a man who couldn't imagine losing to a scratch unit.

But as the Blue Company collapsed on the twins, the shell collapsed inward, Kale and the transfer pinched, the twins reset and rolled to the sides, and Seren, backline as ever, started a pivot that would cut off Blue at the central altar.

Soren ran the edge, reading the strike before it happened. Cassian's blade blurred, beautiful and unhelpful. Soren blocked twice, then let Cassian push him as if the pressure was too much, drawing the other boy forward, out of his own protection, toward the center line.

It was all very crisp, very textbook, and Soren hated how well it worked.

He twisted, reoriented, and dropped the sword tip to Cassian's sleeve, clear hit, but Cassian barely slowed, using the momentum to grab Soren at the wrist.

"Not this time," Cassian hissed, and for a second, Soren thought he would try to break his hand. Maybe he expected it, maybe he even wanted it.

But it was an exercise, so instead, Cassian turned the lock and flung Soren face-forward into the broken grass, then stepped back, resetting with idiot precision.

Soren felt the jolt in his arm but ignored it. He popped back up in time to see Seren slam the flat of her blade into Aria's knee,an ugly, effective move. The resulting yelp drew attention from the twins, who, having been written off as chaff, were now driving the Blue rear guard into the far wall.

Instructors looked on from the ruined apse, nobody interfered.

Soren let the next thirty seconds happen at half-speed in his brain. Blue company was splintered, Cassian and Aria together but exposed, and the rest scattered, lured out of position by the basic wish to win quickly.

Soren's forearm ached from the lock, but he could move it. More importantly, Cassian had expected Soren to fold.

He circled left, keeping low, and watched for the moment Cassian would shift back to offense. It came as a flash: Cassian's chin up, eyes slicing the mist, blade set in a stance that telegraphed 'gambit' to anyone watching in the right light.

Soren closed distance, let his own blade hang low, and waited. The strike came as expected, fast, high, overreached. Soren slid inside it, caught Cassian's hilt and pivoted, using Cassian's own locked shoulders as leverage. It wasn't elegant. But it landed, and Cassian's blade fell with a clang that stopped all other motion for a beat.

"CLEAR!" Soren yelled, voice echoing off the arches.

Twins advanced, the transfer right behind, and Seren took position at the nave, blade up, waiting for anyone to challenge. No one did.

Soren stood, hand throbbing, and watched as the bell was rung, a sharp, tinny sound that meant the round was finished.

He waited for Dane's voice, or for a reprimand, but there was only the thick, rain-sheltered silence of Edge Hollow as the teams stood, catching breath.

Cassian stared at him, eyes cold. "We'll run it again."

Soren shrugged, feeling every cut and bruise already setting in. "If you want to lose twice."

Kale whooped, the twins hugged and then immediately pretended they hadn't, and the transfer just sat down and breathed, looking up at the sky as if expecting it to open and rain something other than water.

Seren leaned on her blade and gave Soren a look, part question, part answer.

He knew they would run it again, and again after that. The game was not to win, but to prove it wasn't an accident.

On the far side of the broken nave, Dane sketched something on a notepad and then, if Soren wasn't mistaken, smiled.

It didn't get better with repetition. Four runs, then five, each recalibrated so that Blue held an advantage then lost it, then vice versa. The mist never lifted.

Nobody scored a clean round after the first. By the end of the morning, the two squads were more or less indistinguishable, all mud, sweat, and the haunted look of people who did not, in fact, enjoy being watched fail in public.

Soren eventually stopped feeling the pain in his wrist.

He listened to the critiques, let the instructors pick at his strategy, then reassembled the team with the same calm surface. Inside, the equation ran differently now; it was less about the math and more about how much pressure each mind could tolerate before reverting to animal or ghost.

On the walk back to the Academy, Cassian closed in behind Soren, matching pace. His voice, when it came, sounded tired rather than superior.

"Why do you fight like that?"

Soren kept his eyes ahead. "Like what?"

Cassian shrugged, brushing a sheet of mud from his sleeve. "Like you want to end it as soon as possible, but never for yourself."

Soren was caught off-guard, just briefly. He felt Seren's eyes on him as she jogged up to the right, but she said nothing.

She kept pace, shadow-tight, both of them moving with a kind of muscle memory that felt older than lesson plans or even the bruises still wet on Soren's ribs.

Through the haze, he caught a slice of Cassian's posture, how it oscillated between bladed arrogance and something so tightly wound it might snap either way.

They moved as one: twins bracketed left, Kale and border-province right. He signaled, barely a twitch of the forearm, and Kale's grin vanished, replaced by the calm focus of someone who'd already figured out how the day would end.

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