He was thinking.

’The cruise incident started the moment they boarded — that much he’d figured out right before the floor gave way. But what were the actual conditions of this round? The cadets were scattered across an unfamiliar island with no instructors visible and no rules explained. Was this the point? Was the test about how they handled having no information and no structure? Was there something they were supposed to find, somewhere they were supposed to reach?’

He looked at the island around them — the treeline, the shore stretching away in both directions, the way the terrain rose inland like there was more to it than beach.

’Whatever it is, standing here isn’t going to answer it.’

He was still looking at the treeline when he felt something.

A pressure on the side of his face, specific and directed, the kind you feel when someone is looking at you with some intention behind it.

He turned his head.

Sylvia was looking at him.

More precisely, she was looking at the arm Nova had around his shoulder — at the way Lucas was supporting him, one hand steadying his side, bearing part of his weight, exactly the way Gideon and Celia were helping her on either side.

Her eyes moved between the two arrangements for a moment.

Then they came back to Lucas.

And she was absolutely glaring at him.

And alongside the glare, something else, a slight pull at the corner of her mouth, a faint furrow that was doing its best to look like irritation and was not entirely succeeding at hiding what was underneath it.

She was pouting.

Lucas stared at her. ’...Huh?’

She immediately looked away, chin lifting slightly.

"Hmph."

The sound was quiet and dignified and thoroughly unconvincing.

Lucas opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at Nova. Looked at the way Gideon and Celia were helping Sylvia. Looked back at Sylvia who was now studying the horizon with great focus. Looked at his own arm around Nova’s shoulder.

He genuinely could not find the connection.

He tried again, running it back through his head carefully.

Nothing arrived.

He exhaled through his nose.

’...Did I do something wrong?’ he thought. ’ I seriously don’t understand these women at all.’

"All that aside for now," Celia said, cutting through the argument with the clean efficiency she deployed when things had gone on long enough. Her expression shifted as she looked toward Lucas. "What do you think we should do?"

The moment she said it, everyone’s attention moved to him.

Whatever had happened on the cruise, whatever embarrassing thing anyone had done on the way into the ocean none of it mattered as much as the fact that they were on an unfamiliar island with no instructors, no rules, and no explanation of what was expected of them.

Lucas adjusted Nova’s arm over his shoulder before answering. "Honestly, I can’t give a proper conclusion yet," he said, and there was no performance in the admission. "There’s still too little information for any of us to know what we’re actually supposed to do here."

Everyone listened without interrupting.

He looked toward the deeper parts of the island, where the treeline thickened and the terrain rose away from the shore. "But sitting here thinking about it won’t help either. First things first, we find shelter before the sun gets much lower. Then food, water, somewhere defensible to rest. Whatever this round is testing, surviving carelessly probably isn’t the way through it."

Gideon nodded slowly, his gaze moving along the shoreline and then back to the island’s interior. "This whole thing feels too deliberate to be anything other than intentional. The cruise going down, cadets scattered across wherever this is, no instructors anywhere, no rules given to us." His eyes narrowed slightly. "I’m fairly confident the second round started the moment we fell into the water. Everything since then has been part of it."

"So basically," Nova said, still draped half over Lucas’s shoulder with the posture of someone conserving all available energy, "we build a camp, find food, survive and become heroes of the island?"

Gideon looked at him for a long moment.

"You can barely stand."

Nova straightened with wounded dignity. "I’m injured. That’s different from disabled."

"You screamed louder than the ship’s siren on the way down."

"That was an involuntary vocal response to unexpected freefall."

"You fell into the ocean trying to save someone who had already saved herself."

"I didn’t have that information at the time—"

"It was Sylvia," Gideon said, with the calm finality of someone who considers the subject closed.

"Not you Three!" Nova was now stabbed with three arrows.

Celia tilting her head slightly with the expression she got when she was about to say something Scary. "You know how people enjoy watching someone succeed? It makes them feel inspired and happy seeing someone rise to the occasion?" She looked at Nova. "With you, it’s the opposite. Watching you fail is genuinely more entertaining than watching you win."

Nova’s jaw dropped.

He pointed at her with the energy of someone who has been wronged at the deepest level. "Why are you all bullying me!? I risked my li-"

"That was gravity," Celia said pleasantly.

"You lost a fight with the ocean," Gideon agreed.

"I HATE all of you," Nova announced, looking between them with the expression of a man reassessing every friendship he’d ever made.

Lucas let out a short laugh despite himself, watching Nova conduct his own trial while Gideon and Celia took turns handing down verdicts with complete composure. There was something about the whole thing, the island around them, the unknown ahead of them, and these specific people arguing about Nova’s ocean incident in the middle of all of it that landed somewhere warm in his chest without asking permission.

Then his eyes drifted sideways.

Sylvia was standing just outside the group’s noise, listening without joining in, occasionally glancing in his direction.

Her arm was still resting over Celia’s shoulder. Gideon had stepped away slightly to look at the treeline, which meant she was managing more of her own weight now, and she was doing it without drawing attention to it.

’She said it was fine,’ he thought. ’She would say that regardless of how fine it actually was.’

He filed that away and looked back at the island.

The sun was moving. The treeline wasn’t getting any closer by itself. And somewhere in the back of his mind.

The darkness came back to him in pieces, the silence of it, the way that figure’s voice had echoed strangely. Shadowfang in his hands, him knowing his name

He looked down at his palm without deciding to. Soon, unconsciously clenched his fist slightly. ’Just... what exactly was that thing?’