The air in the Forge’s tactical briefing room was thick with anticipation. Silas stood at the head of the table, his flint-grey eyes scanning the faces of his primary team. They had survived the selection trials, but the true test lay ahead on the jagged shores of the Silent Isle.

  "We leave in forty-eight hours," Silas stated, his voice a low, commanding rumble. "The transport is fueled, and the gear is locked. Sasha, you’ll be coming as the designated assistant. The rest of you—rest. That is an order. Your bodies need to recover from the selection trials before we hit the island sand."

  But the fire in Grace’s veins was not so easily doused. Rest felt like stagnation, and stagnation felt like a death sentence. A day before departure, the air was heavy with an unnatural humidity, the sky a bruised purple. Grace caught Valin’s eye in the hall. A silent understanding passed between them. They weren't going to rest; they were going to the Southern Fringe—the wild, untamed jungle that bordered the Forge’s outer walls—for one final, unsanctioned practice.

  Sasha, Rose, and Fin followed, driven by the same restless adrenaline. They left their primary Luma-weapons locked in the armory to avoid detection, carrying only collapsible training rods and basic sidearms. They thought it would be a light sparring session. They were wrong.

  The jungle was unnervingly silent. The usual chatter of insects had vanished, replaced by a heavy, metallic tang in the air.

  "Something’s wrong," Valin whispered, his hand going to his training bow. "The wind smells like... burnt Luma."

  Suddenly, the undergrowth exploded. Eight shadows emerged—lions, but not the golden kings of the plains. These were Luma-fueled Prides. Their manes crackled with jagged arcs of blue electricity, and their muscles bulged unnaturally beneath skin that rippled with glowing, sickly veins. They weren't hunting for food; they were hunting for blood.

  The first five lions launched themselves in a coordinated strike. Without their primary blades, the team was forced into a frantic, low-tech defensive circle. Sasha and Fin took the lead. Sasha used her speed to keep two of the lions at bay, her training rod whistling through the air as she struck at their eyes and sensitive nose pads. Fin acted as the "anvil," taking the brunt of the physical force.

  Fin baited a massive male lion into a charge, bracing a heavy equipment crate against a cedar tree. The lion slammed into it, and Sasha, leaping from a low-hanging branch, drove her training rod into the beast's ear canal with a sickening crunch. But the victory was short-lived.

  A second lion lunged from the tall grass, its claws catching Fin’s calf and dragging him down. The beast’s fur was humming with a static Luma-charge that fried the nerves in Fin's leg as the skin tore. Sasha tried to intervene, but the third lion tackled her, its sheer mass crushing her leg against a jagged root. Grace helped Fin to safety, then stood her ground and put an end to the lion’s charge. Though they managed to kill the attackers, Fin and Sasha were effectively removed from the fight, their blood staining the dark earth. Rose and Valin each took down a beast.

  These beasts are stronger than they imagined.

  With five beasts down, the remaining three seemed to change. Their growls shifted into a mechanical, high-pitched whine. Valin took the Alpha. He fought with a refined, defensive style, but suddenly, the beast’s eyes bled from blue to a pulsating, angry crimson.

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  The Alpha's speed doubled instantly. Valin’s training rod snapped like a toothpick when he tried to block the next strike. The beast’s jaws locked onto Valin’s forearm, the bone crunching audibly.

  “Aghh….!” Valin yelled.

  Rose, seeing Valin about to be mauled, abandoned her own target. She slid under the Alpha’s belly, ignoring the electrical arcs, and drove a broken piece of obsidian into the lion’s throat. The Alpha slumped, dead, but Valin’s arm was already a shattered mess of bone and poisoned tissue.

  On the other end of the clearing, Grace had defeated the second lion with a brutal strike to its temple. But she was exhausted, her Luma-reserves bottomed out. The lion Rose had left—the third of the final trio—saw its opening. It struck Grace from behind, slamming nearly 500 pounds of mutated muscle into the mud.

  Grace felt her femur crack as the beast’s jaws clamped onto her thigh.

  “Hiss…” Grace sighed.

  The pain was absolute, a white noise that threatened to shut her brain down. The lion prepared for the throat-crush, its eyes glowing that terrifying red. But in the depths of her agony, Grace found a rhythm—the Severing Harmonic. She gripped her training rod and focused every drop of her remaining Luma into a single, crystalline vibration.

  As the rod vibrated, the lion’s eyes suddenly flickered from red back to a dull, confused blue. The "signal" controlling its rage was temporarily jammed. The beast’s grip loosened just enough for Grace to wrench her leg free and drive the rod through its eye.

  Fin had managed to trigger the emergency flare before passing out. A moment later, the sky was filled with the roar of engines. Silas and Harkan dropped from a low-flying carrier, their faces masks of fury and horror.

  They took them back to the infirmary, where the silence of the medics was louder than the lions' roars. Rose and Fin were treated in Luma-vats; they would recover, but they were shaken. Sasha’s leg was broken in three places, but as an assistant, her loss was a tactical blow, not a disqualification for the team.

  But for Grace and Valin, the news was devastating.

  "I can't go," Grace whispered from her bed, her voice cracking as she looked at Silas. "Commander... I… I can't walk."

  Silas didn't look at her. He looked at the data on his tablet—the evidence of a necrotic Luma-strain that had eaten away at the muscle fibers in her leg and Valin's arm. The bone was mended, but the nerves were unresponsive. They would walk again, but they wouldn't be able to perform at 100% for months. They were out of the Dominance League.

  "Harkan," Silas said, his voice hollow. "Take the second-string team. Take two other candidates and represent the Forge. I'm staying behind."

  Harkan looked surprised. "Commander? You're missing the League?"

  "I have to look into this," Silas said, pointing to the report on the "Red-Eye" mutation. "This is the third case. One in the city, one Kael mentioned near the Bastion, and now here. Someone is testing a weapon, Harkan. They turned the jungle into a laboratory, and my kids were the lab rats."

  The dream of the Silent Isle was dead. For Grace and Valin, the "Slaughterhouse" had arrived early, and it hadn't come from a rival school—it had come from the shadows of a world that was becoming more dangerous by the hour.

  Grace lay in the dark of the medical wing, staring at her bandaged leg. The silence was deafening. She had spent years preparing for this moment, only to have it snatched away by a monster in the woods.

  "I'll kill them," she whispered to the empty room, her eyes glowing with a dark, cold promise. "Whoever did this... I'll beat them to shit."