The sun dipped low behind the academy walls, casting golden light across the training field. Most students had gone inside, but five figures still lingered near the sparring dummies, their energy refusing to die with the sun.
Kajala was upside-down, balancing on one hand with his whip wrapped around a wooden post. "You gotta work your core, Rei," he said, voice slightly strained. "No magic means no laziness!"
Rei grunted, sweat dripping from his brow as he struck at a training dummy again and again. "You're not even doing anything. Just… posing."
"I'm meditating," Kajala said, flipping to his feet with fox-like grace. "With style."
Regulus charged past them, attempting a spinning axe technique he'd loudly named Whirling Judgment. His foot caught a rock. He slipped, crashed into the ground, and rolled into a bush.
Again.
Elrya, sitting nearby on a bench, didn't even look up from her notebook. "That's your fourth time today."
"Fifth," Rika said, hanging upside-down from a tree branch by her legs, watching Regulus like a bat. "You missed the one earlier, when he tried to headbutt a cloud."
"That cloud mocked me," Regulus said from inside the bush.
"You talk to clouds?" Rei asked.
"They started it," Regulus muttered.
Rika suddenly dropped from the tree and landed silently next to Rei. She leaned close, uncomfortably close. "Hey. Do you like locks?"
"No," Rei said flatly.
"I once picked a lock with my teeth," she whispered proudly.
"Why?"
"It was alive."
Elrya sighed, closed her notebook, and stood. "We are the most chaotic group in this entire academy."
Kajala looped his whip lazily around his neck like a scarf. "That's why we're perfect. Come on, group name time! We need something iconic, terrifying, beautiful."
"Something bold!" Regulus declared, emerging from the bush dramatically, leaves stuck in his hair.
Rika blinked. "What about... The Lock Breakers?"
"We don't all pick locks," Elrya said.
"We do break things," Rei muttered, glancing at Regulus.
"How about Team Whip-It?" Kajala said with a grin.
"No," said everyone except Kajala.
They went back and forth until the sun was gone and the lanterns came on. In the end, no name was chosen. But somehow, it didn't matter.
They sparred. They bickered. They ate roasted potatoes Kajala had stolen from the kitchen and sat on the roof of the east dorm watching stars poke through the night sky.
Rei didn't say much, but he watched them these strange, loud, unpredictable people.
And for the first time in a long time… he didn't feel like a weapon waiting for a war.
He felt like part of something.
Something chaotic.
Something human.
Something like… home.
Morning came fast.
Too fast.
Rei awoke to Kajala shaking him aggressively by the shoulders. "Up, up, up! We've got our guild trial today!"
"Trial?" Rei muttered, still half-asleep. "No one told me there was a trial…"
"I told you three times," Kajala said cheerfully. "You were scowling and ignoring me, as usual."
Ten minutes later, Rei was running down the hall with one boot half-on, still chewing a piece of bread.
They met the others near the academy's southern gate. Elrya had already packed two bags of potions and scrolls, Rika was spinning her daggers while mumbling something about trap smells, and Regulus had his axe slung across his back like it weighed nothing.
"Trial time, baby!" Regulus bellowed. "I'm going to uppercut a wolf!"
"Please don't," Elrya said, rubbing her temples.
Instructor Hael, a tall man in gray armor with one glowing eye and a missing arm, met them outside the gate.
"Guild Number Seventy-Two," he said in a gravel voice. "Your first mission is simple: survive. There's a sealed dungeon two hours south. You'll enter. Navigate its first floor. Retrieve the flag at the center. Return."
Kajala raised his hand. "What if we die?"
"You fail."
"What if we die in a funny way?"
"You still fail."
"Noted."
The walk to the dungeon was uneventful — if one ignored Regulus slipping into a ditch, Rika trying to unlock a squirrel cage (which was actually just a nest), and Kajala daring Rei to race him every five steps.
Eventually, they reached the entrance — an iron door half-buried in the hillside, overgrown with moss. A strange sigil pulsed above it.
"This dungeon's been sealed for a decade," Elrya said, examining it. "Supposedly cleared, but unstable."
"Just like us," Kajala whispered to Rei with a smirk.
They stepped inside.
The air shifted instantly — cold and damp, like the walls themselves were breathing.
The torchlight cast long shadows. Cracks in the stone revealed strange runes. A deep hum echoed through the narrow corridors.
Rei's instincts twitched.
"Stay sharp," he said. "I don't trust this place."
Rika walked ahead on all fours, sniffing and tapping stones with her daggers. "Trap here. Trap there. Oooh, poison gas rig — I like this dungeon."
They passed skeletons long rotted, broken weapons scattered across the floor. Nothing attacked them.
Until it did.
A grinding noise echoed from behind — then ahead — then all around.
The floor split open.
The group scattered as a gout of flame shot up from the tiles. A construct of molten stone burst from the corridor ahead, a false knight wrapped in fire and ash.
Rei instinctively stepped forward — no magic, no weapon but his training. "We hold the line!"
Regulus charged with a howl — tripped, fell, rolled, and still somehow slammed his axe into the creature's knee. The knight staggered.
Elrya cast a wall of water to hold the flames back. Kajala danced around the thing, whip flashing and cracking like thunder.
Rika skittered up the wall, landed on the creature's back, and stabbed at its joints, cackling.
Rei ducked beneath a flaming blade, rolled forward, grabbed Regulus's axe mid-swing, and drove it into the construct's chest.
With a roar of fire, the thing exploded in a burst of smoke and light.
Silence returned.
Panting. Smoke. Ash in the air.
Then Rika said, "That was hot. Literally. Figuratively. Hot."
Kajala fell back dramatically. "So… we can fight together. Who knew?"
Rei looked around at them — bruised, singed, panting.
Alive.
Bonded.
"Let's finish this," he said.
And so, they went deeper.