The announcement came before first period.
A single sheet posted on every classroom door across Class 1-A through 1-C.
Field Exercise. Report to the outer arena at the eighth bell. No exceptions.
The outer arena was not the Central Arena.
It sat at the Academy's southern edge, past the equipment block and the secondary training yards, where the Academy grounds gave way to a wider expanse enclosed by old stone walls. Students gathered in the open space before it, still in morning energy, still talking.
The instructor standing at the front was not Tanaka.
He was shorter, broad-shouldered, with a rank badge that he wore on the inside of his collar so only the edge of it showed. He looked at the assembled students the way someone looked at a problem they had agreed to solve.
He waited until the talking stopped.
It stopped quickly.
"Today's field exercise will be conducted in teams," he said. "Find a partner. Maximum four per team. Minimum three. Anything below three and you are disqualified before we begin."
The crowd moved immediately.
The reshuffling was not subtle. Students angled toward the strongest people they knew, calculating fast, the social mathematics of who you wanted beside you when something was about to get difficult. Groups formed. Names were called across the space. Hands raised.
Ren stood still.
Kaito appeared beside him.
"Team up?" Kaito said.
"Yes," Ren said.
Around them the crowd continued sorting itself. Teams of three and four locking in, the energy shifting from searching to settled as each group found its configuration.
Ren and Kaito stood with two.
The instructor was already beginning his count.
"Excuse me."
They both turned.
Mizuki stood behind them with her bag over one shoulder and her expression carrying the particular calm of someone who had already decided something and was now simply announcing it.
"Would you like me on your team?"
"Yes please," Kaito said immediately.
Ren looked at her for a moment.
Then he nodded.
Mizuki stepped into the space beside them.
Three.
The instructor waited until every team was confirmed.
Then he turned toward the gate at the arena's southern wall.
"Follow me," he said.
The gate opened slowly.
Beyond it was forest.
Dense. The trees began immediately past the threshold, no gradual thinning, no transition zone. One step and the Academy grounds were behind you and the canopy was above you and the light came through in broken pieces.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
The instructor stepped to one side of the gate and turned to face the assembled students. A faint glow ran across everyone's wrists simultaneously, marks forming in pale light, one per student.
"This is your first Field Exercise," he said. "Listen carefully because I will say everything once."
Complete silence.
"Your objective is points. Points come from two sources." He held up one finger. "Territory marks. They are scattered through the forest, attached to trees, roots, stones. Find them. Stand within range and your team begins accumulating points. The longer you hold a mark the more it pays out." A second finger. "Combat. Defeating a member of an opposing team earns points. Defeat means unable to continue. Not death. This is a training exercise, not a Gate."
He looked across the groups.
"You can take a territory mark from another team by entering their zone and winning the engagement. Control becomes contested the moment you step in range. Combat decides who keeps it."
A student near the front raised a hand.
"What counts as falling?"
"Your wrist mark goes dark," the instructor said. "One member falls, the other two feel it. All three fall, your team is eliminated." He paused. "Teams with all three members still active at the end receive a bonus. Factor that into your decisions."
He gestured toward the forest.
"The environment is not neutral. You will encounter low visibility zones where mist reduces sight lines. Cognitive distortion in certain areas, brief illusions, sounds that are not what they seem. Pressure fields that increase physical strain. And mana suppression zones where your magical output will slow or weaken." He looked at the students evenly. "You will not be told where these zones are. You will find them."
He stepped back.
"Two hours. No exits once you cross the threshold. Points are tracked through your wrist marks in real time."
He looked at the forest.
Then at the students.
"Begin."
The teams crossed the threshold.
The forest took them immediately, the light shifting the moment the canopy closed overhead, the Academy grounds disappearing behind the first line of trees as if they had never been there.
Ren walked.
Kaito moved beside him on the left, already scanning the tree line, his wind magic running low and quiet at his fingertips, not casting, just feeling for air disturbance.
Mizuki was on the right, one pace back, her eyes moving differently from Kaito's, not outward but through, the specific attention of someone whose ability was perceptive rather than combative.
The sounds of other teams dissolved into the forest around them.
Somewhere ahead a branch snapped.
Somewhere to the left, nothing. Then mist.
Ren looked at the trees above them and felt the shadows between them, dense and cool and very present.
He kept walking.