The angel checking teams at the forest boundary had the specific expression of someone who has been doing the same administrative task for several hours and has arrived at a place beyond patience, somewhere in the territory of professional endurance.
He looked at the five of them, then at the balls, then at his list.
"Team 7," Arjun said, stepping forward and presenting all five balls together in his palm. "Please send us into the forest."
The angel checked each ball against his list with the methodical speed of someone who has done this approximately fifty times today and expects to do it fifty more times before the afternoon is over. Then he moved to the equipment check — one per candidate, working down the line with practiced efficiency that left no room for confusion about what he was doing or why.
The rule was simple. Each candidate could bring a maximum of two magical items into the forest. No exceptions, no appeals, no creative interpretation of what counted. The exam was supposed to measure the candidates, not their equipment.
When he finished he reached down and picked up a device that looked like a remote control — compact, rectangular, slightly too large for one hand, with a single button on the face of it that he held with the care of someone who is aware of what pressing it does.
"You're all clear. When I press this, you will teleport to a random location inside the forest." He looked at them with the steady expression of a man who has delivered this line many times and means it every time. "Best of luck."
He pressed the button.
---
The forest arrived all at once.
One moment there was the open field, the line of candidates, the pale morning light of Shambala's boundary. The next there was nothing but trees — enormous trees that had looked wrong from the outside and were significantly wronger from the inside. The canopy overhead was dense enough that the light reaching the forest floor was greenish and filtered, suggesting a different time of day than it actually was. The sounds of the field were completely gone. In their place was the forest — wind moving through high branches, something distant and indeterminate, the particular quality of silence that isn't silence but is the absence of human noise.
Rudra looked around.
Javier was beside him, slightly closer than expected, adjusting his glasses with one finger. A few steps away Arjun had already turned a full circle and was completing his read of the immediate area with the quiet efficiency of someone who has assessed unfamiliar territory before and knows which details matter first. Sophia was to his left, hand resting near her side, posture settled and ready without being tense.
"Wait — where's Karlos?"
The question had barely finished forming when the sound arrived.
Faint at first — high-pitched, distant, coming from somewhere above the canopy. Then louder. Growing louder with the specific acceleration of something approaching from a great height at considerable speed, descending in a direction that was not chosen voluntarily.
Sophia tilted her head. "Do you hear that?"
Everyone focused.
"Ahhhhh!!!"
They looked up.
A figure was falling through the canopy — breaking through branches in rapid succession, the impacts audible one after another, trailing leaves and pieces of broken wood, describing a descent that was in no way controlled or intentional.
The figure hit the ground.
The impact was significant. A sound like something heavy meeting packed earth, a small spray of displaced soil, a crater in the forest floor that was by any reasonable measure not something a person should be standing up from.
Karlos stood up from it.
He removed a leaf from his hair with the unhurried attention of someone dealing with a minor inconvenience. He brushed dirt from his shirt in two efficient sweeps. He looked at the rest of them with the expression of a man who has processed what just happened and arrived at a firm opinion about it.
"WHY THE HELL DID THEY TELEPORT ME TO THE TOP OF A TREE?!"
Nobody had an answer for this.
He was, Rudra noted, completely uninjured. Not mostly uninjured, not moving carefully in the way of someone assessing damage as they go — completely, entirely, not a scratch. A fall from that height through that canopy, with those impacts on the way down, and nothing. He rolled his shoulders once and walked over to the group with his normal stride.
Arjun cleared his throat.
"Now that everyone is present — I suggest we discuss strategy before we move." He looked around the group. "Specifically, I think we should start by sharing our astras. We'll coordinate better if we understand what each of us can do."
Rudra raised his hand.
"I'll go first. My astra is called [Thousand Hand Dominion]. I can create multiple hands made of soul energy — they carry significant destructive force and I can direct them independently from wherever I position them." A brief pause. "Right now I can only control two at a time. That's where I am with the training."
He lowered his hand.
On his left, another hand appeared beside it. Then another. Then two more beside that. Five hands raised on Karlos's right side, belonging to the same person, which was a method of indicating you wanted to speak that Rudra had never encountered before and expected never to encounter again.
"My turn! My astra is called [Flash Blossom]." His grin was the widest thing currently visible in the forest. "I can grow any body part I want, as many as I want, anywhere I want."
As he said this, something appeared on the trunk of the tree directly behind Rudra.
An eye. Fully formed, brown-irised, blinking once with the calm awareness of something that has always been there and is simply now making itself known.
Rudra turned, saw it, and took a step sideways without fully meaning to.
"I can see through that one right now," Karlos said cheerfully. "I can produce as many as I need — eyes, hands, ears, whatever is useful. Good for watching things nobody knows I'm watching." He considered this for a moment. "Also useful for confusing people."
Rudra looked at the eye on the tree. The eye looked back at him with complete equanimity.
He had a feeling this was going to be one of those abilities that was reassuring when it was on your side and profoundly unpleasant when it wasn't.
Sophia spoke next, without being asked.
"My astra is called [Bloodthirsty Leviathan]."
Something appeared beside her — floating in the air at roughly chest height, moving in the slow, independent way of a creature that exists according to its own logic. About the length of a forearm. A long tail. A fin running along its back. A mouth with small, precise fangs that it was not currently doing anything threatening with. It regarded the assembled group with an expression that managed to convey mild interest and complete indifference simultaneously.
"It helps in fight."
Karlos studied it for a moment.
"Sister, I mean this respectfully — I don't think your little friend is going to help much in a serious fight."
Sophia and the Leviathan both looked at him with identical expressions. The Leviathan's was more impressive given the size difference.
"You're not entirely wrong," Sophia said, without any particular defensiveness. "At the start it can't do much. But it gets stronger the more blood it encounters. The more serious the fight, the more it escalates." She glanced at the Leviathan floating beside her. "I've never pushed it to its limit. I don't know its ceiling yet."
The implication of an ability with no known ceiling settled quietly over the group.
Javier was next. He had been quiet through all of this — not the quiet of someone waiting to speak, but the particular quality of quiet that suggests internal processing happening below the surface. He pushed his glasses up once before speaking.
"My astra is called [Knight of Darkness]." He paused. "And.. uh.. I rather not use it, and don't ask why."
The group waited.
Nothing further came.
Arjun regarded him for a moment with the careful neutrality of someone who has noted a detail and is filing it away rather than acting on it. It was not unusual for fighters to protect the specifics of their abilities — there were strategic reasons, there were personal reasons, and none of them required justification in the middle of an exam forest. He let it go.
"Alright," Arjun said. "Now that we have a clearer picture of the team—"
"Wait," Sophia said. She was looking at Arjun with the attentive expression of someone who has noticed a gap in the accounting. "We've all shared ours. What about you?"
Arjun looked at her.
A brief silence occupied the space between the question and the answer — the kind that could mean several things and was currently meaning exactly one of them.
"I don't mind sharing," he said. "But I should be straightforward about it." He held her gaze steadily. "I don't have one."