Six months had passed, eroding the soft edges of the lives they had left behind. The transition from the Heights to the internal gears of Luma was no longer a shock—it was a routine. The bruises on Grace’s shoulders had faded into permanent calluses, and in the quiet of the spires, Mable had learned that silence wasn't just a lack of sound—it was a shield. Outside, the seasons changed in colors they couldn't see, marked only by the shifting humidity in the vents and the deepening chill of the ivory stone.

  In the Sanctum, the Hall of Resonances had been transformed into a sensory nightmare.

  Archon BloomLight stood at the center of the chamber, her hands folded inside her sleeves like the eye of a hurricane. Around her, the room was a cacophony of engineered chaos. Industrial turbines roared in the corners, clashing with the screech of grinding metal. High-decibel music pulsed through hidden speakers while the rhythmic shick-shick of sparring blades echoed off the high ceilings. It was a battlefield’s noise, designed to shatter a healer’s focus.

  BloomLight didn't speak. She simply raised a hand, and the thick, heavy air of the chamber began to shimmer. Glowing threads of silver Luma wove themselves into sharp, glowing script that floated in front of every student's field of vision. The words hung there, unaffected by the shaking of the floor or the screaming of the machines: Find the Sun-vail bird. One hour. Pinpoint or be dismissed.

  She scanned the ninety students, her gaze lingering on Mable. "You have one hour to find the location. You will work in teams of five. If your team fails to pinpoint the coordinate, you are dismissed. You will leave the Sanctum today, or your positions will be downgraded to medical assistants—scrubbing floors until your retirement "

  The room erupted into a different kind of chaos as students scrambled. Mable didn't move. She closed her eyes, filtering the roar of the turbines. She felt a hand on her shoulder—Hana, the girl she met on the first day. They were inseparable now.

  "Who should we team up with?" Hana asked, her voice strained against the noise.

  Before Mable could answer, a boy with glasses approached them. "Hi, I’m Gabe. Can we team up?"

  Mable nodded, introducing herself and Hana. They needed two more. Mable scanned the room for the ones who weren't panicking—the ones whose heartbeats weren't spiking in the noise. Gabe mentioned he knew two others from his previous classes who were solid under pressure.

  Mable followed him toward two students standing perfectly still. As Gabe called them out, they turned in unison, their eyes shifting to Mable.

  One of them smiled. "We know you. Mable, right? You're a growing talent."

  Mable looked confused, the praise unexpected in such a cold environment.

  "We had a class together," he added, extending a hand. "I’m Ben, and this is my brother, Bryan. We’re twins." He added the last part as if it weren't completely obvious; they were identical in every way, except for the aura of gentle calm that seemed to radiate from Ben.

  At the Forge, the sun was a dying ember on the horizon, casting long, orange shadows across the training grounds. Grace lay flat on her back in the sparse, tough grass at the edge of the perimeter, her arms spread wide. Every muscle in her body felt like it had been shredded and reassembled, but she didn't mind the ache.

  She looked up at the sky, her mind drifting away from the steel and the soot. Tomorrow was Mable’s birthday. For the first time in their lives, there would be no stolen cakes, no whispered secrets in the mountain air, and no Caleb trying to calculate exactly how many candles they could afford. She and Mable were always together, they never spent a birthday alone.

  The realization hit her harder than any of Harkan’s drills—a quiet, hollow thud in the center of her chest.

  "Still alive, Grace?"

  A shadow fell over her. A group of seniors, including Valin, stood nearby, looking down at her with a mix of respect and exasperation. Grace was no longer just a recruit; she was a legend in the making, mostly because she was the only person in the history of the Forge who seemed to enjoy making Commander Silas’s blood boil.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Barely," Grace smirked, not opening her eyes. "I’m just waiting for the earth to swallow me whole so I don’t have to do Silas's 'vertical climb' drill again tomorrow."

  “Here got this for you” A girl of valin’s age tossed her juice”.

  Grace caught it flawlessly.

  “Thanks Rose ” Grace smiled.

  “Where is your shadow? Valin asked, referring to Sasha.

  Before Grace can answer, A loud voice came “ who are you calling a shadow”,

  Rose chuckled and tossed another can to Sasha.

  “We have Commander Silas class next” another boy named Fin sighed.

  "You pestered him for three hours about the Luma-calibration on the rail-tillers," Valin said, shaking his head. "I've seen that man melt bullets with his hands, Grace, but I've never seen his neck turn that specific shade of purple before you started arguing with him. You’re going to get us all killed, or promoted."

  Grace let out a sharp, genuine laugh. "He likes it. It keeps his heart rate up."

  Back in the Hall of Resonances, the air was thick with the smell of ozone and the frantic energy of failing teams.

  "Mable, I can't hear anything but the music," Gabe hissed, clutching his head. "It's like my brain is vibrating."

  "Stop trying to hear with your ears," Mable commanded, her voice low and steady. "The turbines are low frequency, the blades are high. The bird... the bird is a living pulse. It’s irregular."

  “Should we divide and look?” Hana suggested, her eyes darting around the massive chamber. “The hall is big. Maybe we each take a spot and search.”

  “You will find nothing,” a cold voice broke in. It was Bryan. “That will just waste our time.”

  Ben took over with an apologetic smile. “What he means is, that’s too time-consuming. The probability of finding the bird in this mess by sight is nearly zero.” Bryan pointed toward a dark alcove without looking. “And you can skip that corner. There’s nothing there.”

  “How do you know?” Hana asked.

  Bryan didn’t answer, but Ben stepped in. “He can listen to Luma-based weapons and identify each one by its hum. That corner is filled with sparring blades. A Sun-vail bird wouldn't survive the static there.”

  Ben stepped away to scout with Gabe, his fingers beginning to glow with a soft, practiced light. When he returned ten minutes later, Mable’s eyes widened. Hana rarely saw Mable’s expression change, but seeing a fellow student already channeling Luma was a shock.

  “You can already use Luma techniques?” Mable exclaimed.

  Ben smiled modestly. “We’ve been training since we were four; it would be a shame if I couldn’t do it by now. But I found nothing. I tried tracing the room with my Luma, but the interference is too high.”

  "Twenty minutes left!" Hana cried out, her voice nearly lost in a roar from the turbines.

  Mable stood still, her mind racing through solutions. She could try elimination, but each corner would take thirty minutes to filter. They were out of time. Suddenly, she turned to Ben.

  "Ben," she asked, her gaze intense. "Can you use your Luma to deprive me of my senses? Can you temporarily shift all my focus toward just one?"

  Ben’s eyes widened with surprise. Before he could speak, Bryan stepped forward. "He can't do it alone yet. But if we combine our forces, we can."

  Mable gave a firm nod. She needed total sensory deprivation—to cut off the physical world so she wasn't distracted by the screaming metal or the pulsing music. As the twins placed their hands near her temples, the world went black. The smell of ozone vanished. The vibration of the floor died.

  In the void, she heard it: a heartbeat.

  Mable realized then why Ben’s tracing had failed. A bird in a room full of this much noise wasn't singing—it was terrified. It was silent. You couldn't track a voice that wasn't there; you had to track life.

  Five minutes remained. The pressure was a physical weight—the threat of being a "regular assistant," scrubbing floors and never seeing Grace or Caleb again. The thought of failing Grace flashed through her mind like a strike of lightning. She reached out, her fingers dancing through the empty air, feeling for the tiniest skip in the room's vibration.

  Suddenly, she felt it. A tiny, rhythmic flutter near a ventilation duct in the far ceiling.

  According to the rules, they couldn't point. They had to wait and provide the exact coordinates when the clock hit zero.

  “Found it,” she murmured. Bryan and Ben pulled their hands away, and the roar of the Hall crashed back into her senses.

  BloomLight watched from the shadows, her expression unreadable. Mable stood her ground, her eyes locked on the distant duct, her own pulse finally steady. She had found the echo. Now, she just had to survive the results.