Sophie didn't wait for Alen to agree or disagree. She grabbed his sleeve and walked, cutting through the dispersing crowd like someone who already knew exactly where she was going.
Alen let himself be pulled along. Partly because arguing would just waste time, and partly because in the thirty seconds he'd had to look around on his own, he hadn't spotted anyone worth approaching either.
Sophie slipped through a gap between two clusters of students and raised her hand in a wave.
"Hey, Marie!"
Across the thinning crowd, two girls stood near a dark-haired boy. One of them turned at the sound of her name — blonde hair catching the morning light, green eyes finding Sophie almost immediately, like she already knew where to look.
Getting closer filled in the details. The girl Sophie had called out was bright-faced, the kind of person whose default expression just ran warm. Beside her stood another girl, also blonde, also green-eyed — similar enough that the connection between them was obvious without anyone needing to say it. And next to them, a young man with long black hair falling past his jaw, arms loosely crossed, posture relaxed but not exactly welcoming.
"Sophie!" Marie's face broke into a wide grin the moment recognition hit. "It's been forever — where have you even been?"
She closed the gap herself, pulling Sophie into a quick but enthusiastic hug before stepping back to get a proper look.
"Your hair—"
"I know."
"I love it."
"I know that too."
Marie laughed — the kind of laugh that didn't really need a reason, just someone around to hear it. "Okay but yes, obviously I'm joining your team. You didn't even have to ask, honestly."
Her full name, as Alen would piece together soon enough, was Marie Andeyth. She carried herself lightly, like someone who genuinely didn't overthink most things — not careless, just unburdened in a way that felt natural rather than performed.
Sophie glanced at the other blonde girl beside Marie. "Your sister?"
"Cousin," Marie corrected. "She's looking for a team too, actually."
The cousin gave a small, polite nod but didn't offer her name yet — she seemed like the type who preferred to observe before committing to anything.
Then Sophie turned to the dark-haired boy.
"What about you?"
Friendly enough question. Sophie's tone usually was. But his response wasn't really an answer — more like a slow, unhurried look. First at Sophie, then shifting to Alen, where it stayed a beat longer than it needed to. Not aggressive, exactly. Just the particular kind of look people gave when they were weighing whether someone was worth the trouble.
He didn't say anything at first.
Alen held the gaze without reacting. He'd been on the receiving end of looks like that before — half assessment, half quiet challenge. He didn't see any reason to do anything about it.
Sophie, unbothered, just waited.
"What elements are you missing?" the boy finally said. His voice was low — not quite bored, but not far off.
"We've got Fire and Water," Sophie said. "Still need Earth, Wind, and Lightning."
A short pause.
"Earth." Which was both an answer to her question and an explanation for why he was still standing there.
Sophie smiled like this was already settled. "What's your name?"
Another pause — shorter this time.
"Dren."
No family name. Sophie didn't ask for one.
Alen studied him briefly. Dren stood at roughly the same height, broad enough in the shoulders to suggest he wasn't purely magic-reliant. The long black hair framed a face that was sharper than it first appeared — firm jaw, dark eyes that moved with a quiet kind of attention that Alen recognized, though he'd seen it expressed differently in other people. This one watched without making it obvious he was watching.
They still hadn't exchanged a single word directly, and Alen suspected that was deliberate on both ends.
Marie, either unbothered by or simply unaware of the tension that had just been silently negotiated, clapped her hands together once.
"Okay so we've got four. One more." She scanned the thinning field. Most students had already locked into groups — the window was closing fast. "Still need Wind or Lightning, right?"
"Either works," Sophie said, already looking around.
"My cousin's Lightning," Marie added, nodding toward the quieter blonde girl, who blinked like she was mildly surprised to suddenly be brought up.
"Oh." Sophie looked at her again, this time with more direct attention. "Do you have a group already?"
The girl shook her head once.
"Then you're with us," Sophie said — not as a command, more like the natural conclusion to an obvious problem.
A brief hesitation. Then, quietly, "Alright."
"What's your name?"
"Lira."
"Lira Andeyth?"
"Lira Caine." She said it plainly. "We're cousins on my mother's side."
Sophie nodded, already running through the roster in her head. "Okay, that's five. We're good."
---
Registration was quick. They made their way to one of the tables lined up along the left side of the field, where an upperclassman with a clipboard took down their names one by one.
"Team name?"
Sophie thought for a second. "Don't have one yet."
"Needs a name to be registered."
Sophie glanced at the others. The others glanced back. Nobody offered anything. Marie shrugged with a smile. Dren didn't react. Lira looked somewhere else entirely.
"Sophie's Team," Sophie said finally.
Alen looked at her.
"It's simple," Sophie said, slightly defensive. "And easy to remember."
The upperclassman wrote it down without comment. "Team leader?"
"Me." Sophie raised her hand halfway. "Sophie Dola."
Once all the names were on the record and the team card had made its way into Sophie's hand, they stepped back from the table. Sophie stared at the little card for a moment, then looked up at the four of them with an expression that was a little more serious than usual.
"You're all okay with me being leader?"
It wasn't small talk. There was something genuinely careful in the way she asked — she actually wanted to know, worried someone might have reservations they were keeping to themselves.
Marie didn't need time to think. "Completely fine with me." She gave a firm thumbs up. "Honestly if I were leader it'd probably be a disaster."
Alen gave a short nod. "No problem here either."
Dren nodded once — brief and clear. Lira did the same, a little slower but no less certain.
Sophie looked at each of them in turn.
Four answers. Not a single hesitation.
Something in her chest quietly settled without her noticing. She'd been ready for pushback, had small justifications lined up just in case. Turns out she didn't need any of them.
"Uwah—" Her voice came out softer than she meant it to. "You guys are genuinely so sweet. Thank you."
Marie laughed under her breath. "Save the feelings for after we survive the dungeon."
"I'm not being emotional," Sophie said. Her eyes were very slightly shiny.
"Sophie."
"I'm not."
Alen chose not to weigh in on that.
Sophie took one breath, straightened her back, and pulled her expression back into something more composed. "Okay. I'll make sure we get through this. All of us."
Before anyone could respond, something shifted in the air — not a loud sound, but enough to turn dozens of heads in the same direction.
The dungeon doors opened.
Not like normal doors. The two massive stone panels moved inward slowly, without a creak, without any sound of friction — just a smooth, steady motion that felt too effortless for something that heavy. Through the widening gap, the pressure that had been hovering outside now drifted outward more freely. Not wind. More like a breath, if stone could breathe.
Along the lineup, students who had still been murmuring went quiet all at once.
Several groups had already started moving in — the ones who'd clearly been ready for a while, their steps steady even if the tension in their shoulders gave them away a little.
"We're going in," Sophie said.
Not a question.
They walked together toward the entrance. Marie stayed right beside Sophie, her usual lightness dialed back just slightly. Lira followed behind, her left hand wrapped around the strap of the small bag on her shoulder — a small, automatic gesture she probably wasn't even aware of. Dren walked the same as he always had, no faster, no slower, like a dungeon entrance wasn't particularly different from a classroom door.
Alen walked on the right side of the group.
When he crossed the threshold, the air shifted immediately against his skin. Denser. Daylight still reached a few meters in, but beyond that, the stone corridor ahead was lit by torches mounted at even intervals along the walls. The flames didn't flicker — steady and still, as if something other than ordinary air was keeping them alive.
The dungeon floor was uneven. Not dangerous, but enough to make every step a little more deliberate.
From deeper in, the sounds of groups who'd entered earlier drifted back — footsteps, murmuring, the occasional low sound of magic being tested at small scale. Understandable. Most people wanted to know if their abilities felt any different in here.
Alen didn't try anything yet. He just walked, letting his eyes adjust to the torchlight, his ears sorting through the sounds — identifying what came from other students, and what didn't.
Sophie stopped once they were far enough from the entrance. She turned to face the four of them.
"Before we go further," she said, voice lower now — matching the space, "let's get one thing straight. If we run into something, nobody moves alone before we've coordinated. We look first, then we act."
Marie's easy expression shifted into something more focused.
Lira nodded.
Dren didn't nod, but he didn't argue either — which Alen read as agreement well enough.
Alen looked at Sophie. "Who takes the front?"
Sophie thought for a second. "You and Dren. Fire and Earth make the most sense up there. Me and Marie in the middle. Lira in the back — keep your distance and cover from range if you need to."
Not bad, Alen thought. For a call made in seconds, without any real knowledge of what the others could actually do, the formation was reasonable.
He moved to the front without a word, taking the left side of the corridor.
Dren took the right, also without comment.
And Sophie's Team — which still didn't have a better name than *Sophie's Team* — walked further into the first floor of Asnia's dungeon.
The torches on the walls flickered once, as if in greeting.