The forest was quiet now.
The c*****e of the Moonrise Trials lay behind them like a bloody memory, fading into the mist that curled along the academy’s training fields. Most of the participants were nursing wounds or celebrating their survival in the dorms. But not Rayne.
She walked in silence through the thickened grove near the eastern ridge, where the trees grew close together and the moonlight barely pierced through the canopy. Jace followed behind her, silent at first, until they reached the edge of a secluded clearing near the academy’s perimeter wall.
Rayne exhaled and sat on the worn trunk of a fallen tree. Her limbs ached. Her skin burned in places where the trial had left its mark. But it wasn’t the bruises or the exhaustion that had brought her out here.
It was the fear.
Th
