He woke up wrong.
Not slowly, not with the gradual return to consciousness that followed a good night's sleep, but with the immediate and unpleasant awareness of a person who has registered, before they are fully awake, that something is already behind schedule. He looked at his watch.
[Time to mission departure: 0:27:19]
He was off the bed before the number finished resolving.
The cold water hit him like a physical argument, which was the point — there was no faster route from asleep to functional and he did not have time to be anything other than functional. He brushed his teeth while the water was still running, dressed in forty seconds, was out the door in forty-five.
The dormitory corridors were quiet at this hour, which meant he could move at full speed without navigating around anyone. He took the stairs in three landings, hit the ground floor at a pace that was technically within the academy's movement guidelines, and arrived at the mission hall entrance breathing harder than he liked.
[Time to mission departure: 0:05:47]
Four students were already assembled in the departure bay.
The one at the front was easy to identify as the team lead — not because of rank insignia, but because he had positioned himself where team leads position themselves, with the particular physical authority of someone who had grown into their considerable height and had opinions about being kept waiting. Second year, Markus estimated. Level somewhere in the mid-twenties based on the density of his mana presence. Fire affinity, from the residual warmth around him.
He looked at Markus arriving with five minutes to spare and did not revise this assessment in a positive direction.
"You're our fifth," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Markus Blackwell. I apologise for cutting it close."
"We've been here twenty minutes." His jaw was set. "I'm Maximus. Fire awakener. I have point on this mission, and I make the calls in the field. I don't know how a first-year got Tier 2 clearance, but you follow my lead and you stay out of the way." He stepped aside with the economy of someone who has delivered this speech and considers it complete.
A girl appeared from behind Maximus with the energy of someone who had been waiting for an opportunity to be less tense. "Hi! I'm Candy. Water affinity." She said it the way people say things when they're genuinely pleased to meet someone and have decided not to hide it. "Don't worry about Max, he's always like this before a mission."
"I am not always—"
"And that's Flint." Candy gestured to the second fire awakener, who was standing slightly behind Maximus in the manner of someone who had adopted that position so long ago it had become structural. Flint nodded once, said nothing, and returned to watching the middle distance.
"And Varus handles ranged and recon." Varus was already facing the doorway, wind affinity manifesting as a faint movement in the air around him. He did not acknowledge the introduction, which Candy treated as an entirely normal response.
Markus bowed to the group — the correct degree of sincerity for a junior addressing seniors he has just inconvenienced. "Thank you for having me. I'll keep up."
He activated Fate's Eye as he straightened.
The affinity was subtle in what it showed — not a dramatic revelation, more a colour temperature, the emotional valence of intent made visible. Candy read neutral, genuinely so, the clear blue of someone who means what she presents. The other three — Maximus, Flint, Varus — carried red, the particular shade of ill intent that had been decided in advance rather than generated by circumstance.
They had come into this mission with a plan that included him.
He filed it away, let his expression settle back into the open, slightly self-deprecating affect of a first-year who is aware he's out of his depth and is trying to be useful anyway. The most effective response to a trap you've already seen is to let the trappers believe it remains unsprung.
He would play the newcomer. He was good at being underestimated.
The academy's transport jet was an eight-seater, and the flight to Oakhaven took forty minutes over the border territories — farmland giving way to managed forest giving way to the denser, wilder green of the forbidden forest's outer boundaries. Markus watched it through the window and thought about a cave that no longer existed, a cliff face with no seam where an entrance had been, the way the forest had accepted its absence without comment.
He was back.
The aircraft descended over Oakhaven's tarmac and he felt, with the same spatial attunement that had mapped every room he'd spent time in since early childhood, the specific texture of this place — the mana gradient from the forest, the faint anomalous pulse of a newly formed portal somewhere west of the perimeter. Stronger than a standard Tier 2. He noted this before the wheels touched down.
Alistair Vance was standing on the tarmac.
He looked exactly as he had at the beast horde — civilian clothes that couldn't quite contain the posture, the same piercing economy of attention that swept a situation before committing to a response. He looked at each student in sequence, briefly, which was the assessment of a career military commander conducted in approximately four seconds.
His gaze reached Markus and held for one beat longer than the others. Not a greeting — Vance was not the kind of person who performed personal acknowledgment publicly — but a registration. You're here. I see you. Then he moved on, and Markus understood that this was exactly what Vance had intended.
"The situation is worsening," Vance said, leading them through Oakhaven's outer district. The town had that border-settlement quality — infrastructure built to withstand pressure, the kind of ordinary life conducted in proximity to extraordinary danger, which had made the residents here specific people with a specific fatalism about mornings. "The portal appeared five days ago. Since then, local wildlife has been behaving irregularly — movements outside normal patterns, territorial behaviour in areas that have been stable for years. The mana density in the portal zone is climbing."
He stopped them at the edge of the western gate and faced the group.
"Your objectives, in order: determine the portal's classification. If it's a dungeon, clear it and extract the core. If it's a portal region, clear the inhabitants and report. If it's an elemental domain—" a brief pause, carrying the weight of a professional opinion he was choosing not to state as an order — "exercise appropriate caution and report back before engaging."
He looked at each of them.
"For Valeria."
He returned to the command centre without ceremony, and the five students stood at the gate looking at the forest.
"Right," Maximus said, and stepped through.
The western path was damp underfoot, the moss-covered soil holding the memory of recent rain, muffling their footsteps in a way that the forest seemed to appreciate. Flint's saber moved through the denser vegetation in short, efficient arcs, clearing the line rather than cutting it wide. Markus noted the technique — economical, practiced, better than the aggression he'd expected from a fire affinity student who fought like he had something to prove.
Their badges pulsed with distance markers.
[367 metres to mission objective.]
[298 metres.]
[241 metres.]
The portal came into view through the trees at a hundred metres — a vertical column of deep blue light, dense and slightly unstable at its edges in the way that portals approaching a tier threshold became unstable. Markus extended his spatial perception toward it before they arrived and read its structure: the mana frequency was elevated, cycling with the particular irregular rhythm of a dungeon portal rather than the steady atmospheric exchange of a portal region. The walls on the other side — he could feel them, the stone geometry of an enclosed space — were close.
"Blue," Maximus said, stopping the group. "Tier 1 to 2 range. Dungeon type, from the look of the density." He glanced back at the group, and something in his expression settled with decision. "Formation: I'm point, Flint flanks on my right, Candy and the first-year in the middle. Varus, rear. Standard progression."
Standard progression. Candy in the middle with Markus. Varus at the rear.
He noted where Varus's positioning placed him relative to a clear sightline on Markus's back, and said nothing.
"Weapons ready," Maximus said.
The greatsword came to his hand with the particular ease of someone for whom the draw had been practiced past the point of thought — a two-handed blade, heavy, fire-enchanted, the heat of it already building along the edge. Flint's saber was single-edged, shorter, built for the close-in angled work that fire affinity worked best at in confined spaces. Varus unslung his bow in the same motion he used to settle into position, an arrow already nocked, the wind affinity threading through the shaft. Candy's staff extended with a gesture.
Markus put his hands in his coat pockets.
Maximus looked at him.
"First year," Markus said, with the mild embarrassment of someone stating an obvious limitation. "Weapons class starts in second year. I'll manage with what I have."
Maximus looked at him for a moment that was long enough to contain a calculation, and then he turned and stepped through the portal.
The others followed. Varus entered last, and as he crossed the threshold, his off hand released something small and fast toward a tree at the portal's edge — a tracker arrow, Markus registered, watching it with his peripheral spatial sense as it embedded in the bark.
Reporting their position to someone.
He stepped through.
The dungeon was stone-walled and crystal-lit — the formations in the walls giving off a blue-white bioluminescence that was functional rather than beautiful, rendering everything in the flat, even light of a space that had no interest in atmosphere. The air was close and mineral-smelling, the specific density of an enclosed mana environment that had been building for some time.
Markus assessed the walls, the ceiling height, the corridor geometry. He mapped the spatial boundaries of the space before he mapped anything else — knowing the room's limits was always the first order of business.
The mana density was higher than it should have been for a Tier 2 dungeon. Maximus had noted it too, which told Markus that whatever Maximus was planning, he was doing it with genuine competence as a baseline. The worst kind of hostile was a competent one.
"On guard." Maximus kept his voice low and flat. "Formation."
They arranged themselves as briefed — Markus in the middle with Candy, which placed Varus's bow directly behind him in the rear position. Candy moved into place beside him with the easy manner of someone who had not been told anything by anyone and was approaching this mission in good faith. He found her presence, under the circumstances, genuinely restful.
The howling came from the dark ahead.
Not one voice — four, overlapping, the cavern's acoustics compressing and bouncing the sound until it arrived as a wall of noise rather than a direction. Wolves emerged from the corridor's darkness at different angles, Level 27 through 30, their eyes catching the crystal light in flat, unreflective discs.
[Level 30 Cavern Wolf]
Markus looked at the level 30. This dungeon was closer to a Tier 3 threshold than the portal's external classification had suggested. Someone had cleared its easier floors before, possibly, and left the harder ones to compound.
"Flame Wall."
Maximus and Flint cast simultaneously, stacking their output — the combined heat of two fire awakeners' walls meeting at a shared focal point and producing something meaningfully more intense than either alone. Markus noted the coordination; they had trained together, or they had natural complementarity, or both.
He cast his spatial bubble quietly, without announcement. The vacuum field settled around him like a change in air pressure — undetectable from outside, present to his senses as a boundary between his space and the dungeon's.
Varus drew.
The wind augmentation on the arrow was audible to spatial perception — a tight, focused threading of his affinity through the shaft that would significantly increase its velocity and penetration. The bow drew back. The angle was wrong for the wolves in the corridor ahead.
The arrow was aimed at Markus.
It loosed.
The spatial bubble intercepted it two centimetres from his left shoulder blade, the deviation so subtle from outside that it looked like a slight draught had caught the shaft and pulled it off course. The arrow embedded in the dungeon wall with a sound that Maximus and Flint, engaged with the wolves in front of them, did not distinguish from the combat noise.
Markus turned his head toward Varus with the expression of a student gently noting a technical difficulty.
"Senior, your first arrow pulled left," he said. "The crystal light in here plays with depth perception — it happens. I'm sure you'll acclimate."
Varus's face did not move. His eyes, however, recalculated.
The message had been received: I know. I want you to know I know. Now let's see what you do with that.
Markus turned back to the wolves.
Spatial Blade. Spatial Blade. Spatial Blade.
Three cuts, placed at the geometric centre of each remaining wolf's mass — the ones that Varus's arrow had been aimed toward before it found the wall, and the ones that Maximus and Flint's fire had not yet reached. The dungeon's crystal light caught nothing of the blades in transit; there was no visual signature, no sound of impact, no resistance. The wolves simply arrived at a state of being in two separate pieces, and the combat was over.
[Level Up.][Level Up.]
Flint looked at the results. He looked at Markus with the expression of someone revising an assumption they'd held since this morning, and finding the revision uncomfortable.
"Not bad," he said, with the grudging precision of someone for whom that phrase costs something.
"I eat well," Markus replied. The smile was pleasant and gave nothing away.
Maximus collected the dungeon drops with a flick of his storage ring and moved forward without commenting. His back was straight, his grip on the greatsword unchanged.
But he had, Markus noted, repositioned fractionally — putting himself at a slightly different angle to Varus than he'd been in before. Whether that was conscious or instinctive, he couldn't tell yet.
He filed it and followed.
Somewhere above them, on the surface of a world that was going about its morning, a tracking arrow was embedded in a tree at a portal entrance outside Oakhaven Borough, transmitting coordinates to a receiver in the capital.
And somewhere in that capital, someone was paying for what they'd decided to do about it.
He would deal with that when it arrived.
For now: the corridor, the dungeon, the next door.