Unknown to the candidates still moving through the valley — hunting, fighting, surviving, clinging to the desperate hope that they would see the sun rise again — something had already changed.
The forest had grown darker over the past few days, the shadows longer and hungrier, and somewhere in the ruins buried beneath centuries of stone and silence, a purple glow had begun to spread like a disease through the veins of the earth.
No one noticed at first.
A candidate here, a candidate there — their eyes flickering purple for just a moment before returning to normal, their movements becoming just slightly off, too fast or too slow or too precise, like puppets learning to dance on strings they couldn't see.
The changes were small, imperceptible, easy to miss in the chaos of the exam.
But then the screaming started, and by then, it was already too late.
