Cold stone pressed against my side as my eyes slowly opened.
For a moment, I didn't move. My thoughts came back in pieces, each one taking longer than it should have to settle into place. The last thing I remembered was standing inside the Grand Assembly Hall with hundreds of other participants, listening as the masked Ethereal Knight explained the Second Trial.
Seventy-two hours.
Complete the trial.
Then his voice carried through the hall one final time.
The Second Trial begins now.
After that, everything blurred. The stained-glass windows had stretched into streaks of color, the floor beneath me had seemed to sway, and someone nearby called my name before the world went dark. I couldn't remember if it had been Rook, Milo, or someone else.
I pushed one hand beneath me and sat up slowly.
The moment I moved, my head felt heavier than it should have. Not painful exactly, but distant, like my body had woken up before the rest of me had fully returned. I stayed still until the street stopped tilting, then blinked hard and forced myself to look around.
I wasn't in the castle anymore.
A ruined city stretched around me.
The street beneath me was made of wide gray stone slabs, cracked in places where weeds had pushed through the gaps. Tall buildings leaned over both sides of the road, their windows dark and their walls worn down by age. Some roofs had collapsed inward, leaving jagged openings where pale light spilled through.
But the city didn't feel destroyed in the way I expected.
There were no bodies. No blood. No scorch marks from a battle. Dust covered the stone and windowsills, but not enough to make the place feel abandoned for years. If anything, it felt like everyone had left in the middle of something and the city had been waiting ever since.
A soft groan came from a few feet away.
I turned my head.
Five other people were lying close around me, all within a few steps of each other. Whoever brought us here hadn't scattered us across the city. They had placed us together, close enough that it was obvious before anyone said it.
All around my age.
The first one I noticed was already pushing himself upright, one hand pressed to the side of his head. He was taller than the rest of us, with broad shoulders and a build that made the simple brown-and-black trial gear look more natural on him than it did on me. A leather guard covered one shoulder, and two straps crossed over his chest, locking into a small center plate that looked practical more than decorative.
A few feet away, another boy still lay flat on his back. He had dark brown hair that fell messily across his forehead, and a dark navy shirt beneath a loose gray outer layer that hung open at the chest. His sleeves were pushed halfway up his arms, though I couldn't tell if the trial had made them that way or if he had done it in his sleep.
The three girls were moving too.
One had short platinum-blonde hair cut around her jaw, sharp enough that even messy, it stood out. Her outfit was darker than the others, a burgundy-and-black vest over a fitted shirt, with leather guards along her forearms. She pushed herself to one knee with a sharp breath, eyes already scanning the street like she was annoyed something had caught her off guard.
Another girl sat closer to the wall, shoulders drawn inward. Light auburn hair fell around her face in loose waves, partly hiding the tan-and-cream layers wrapped around her body. The outfit wasn't heavy armor, more like reinforced cloth built for movement, but the sleeves were long enough that they almost covered her hands.
The last girl was awake but still.
She had long black hair pulled into a high ponytail, with a thick braid woven through part of it and falling over one shoulder. Her outfit was dark green and black, simple and clean, with a sleeveless upper layer, fitted pants, tall boots, and a narrow belt carrying small cases that looked more useful than decorative. While the rest of us were still trying to understand where we were, her gray eyes were already studying the buildings.
I breathed in slowly through my nose.
My hand shifted against the ground, and for a second my fingers curled without me deciding to move them. The thought of my Matter came up automatically, quiet and heavy in the back of my mind. I could feel it there, sitting inside my chest like pressure waiting for a mistake.
I didn't call on it.
The training yard came back too quickly.
Dark Matter twisting around my hand wrong. The pillar cracking apart from one uncontrolled burst. Skye's voice telling me I was trying to make something violent behave like something calmer.
I let my hand relax before anyone could notice.
The broad-shouldered boy stood first.
He brushed dust from his clothes before checking the rest of us, his gaze moving quickly but not carelessly. He wasn't panicking. If anything, he looked irritated that the trial had started without giving him a chance to prepare.
"Six of us," he said.
The boy on the ground turned his head slightly. "That your name?"
The taller boy looked down at him. "What?"
"You said six of us like you were introducing yourself."
The taller boy didn't smile.
"I was counting."
"Right."
The boy on the ground lifted one hand lazily.
"Good to know we have that covered."
The platinum-haired girl rose fully to her feet, dusting one knee off with the heel of her palm. She moved fast, like she hated being caught on the ground more than she hated not knowing where she was. Her eyes moved over the street once before returning to the rest of us.
"Does anyone know where we are?"
No one answered right away.
The question sat between us because there wasn't much anyone could do with it. The buildings around us were unfamiliar, and the silence pressing through the street made it harder to pretend this was just another part of the castle grounds. Wherever we were, it wasn't somewhere any of us had expected to wake up.
The gray-eyed girl finally spoke.
"No."
Her voice was quiet, but steady. She turned slightly, looking at the upper floors of the buildings beside us. Her eyes moved over the broken windows, the worn carvings along the stone, then down toward the street again.
The girl by the wall swallowed and looked at me.
"We were in the hall, right?"
I nodded.
Her shoulders lowered slightly, like she had needed someone else to confirm it.
"The announcement," I said. "Then everything went black."
"That happened to all of us," the taller boy said.
The platinum-haired girl looked at him.
"You don't know that."
"I know none of us walked here."
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
He had a point.
The boy on the ground finally sat up, elbows resting on his knees as he looked around the street. His outer layer had shifted halfway off one shoulder, but he didn't seem to care enough to fix it immediately. He took in the ruined buildings, the cracked street, the gray sky above us, then rubbed both hands down his face.
"Could've warned us before dropping us in the middle of nowhere."
"They did warn us," the taller boy said. "They said the trial was starting."
"That is not the same thing."
"No," the gray-eyed girl said. "It isn't."
The taller boy glanced at her.
For a moment, I thought he might argue.
Instead, he looked around again.
"We need names."
The platinum-haired girl crossed her arms.
"Why?"
"Because if this is a team trial, yelling across the street at people whose names we don't know is going to waste time."
That made enough sense that nobody argued.
He looked over at us again. "I'm Beckham Richter." He said his full name clearly, without hesitation. Not like he was trying to make it sound important. Just with the confidence of someone who had never needed to think twice about saying it.
The laid-back boy stretched his arms above his head before pushing himself to his feet. "Zane Ardell."
The platinum-haired girl spoke next. "Chloe Laurent." She said it quickly, like she wanted that part over with so they could get back to the real problem.
The nervous girl hesitated. Her eyes moved between us once before she hugged one arm around herself. "Holly Fischer."
The gray-eyed girl was last. "Reis Novak." She didn't add anything else.
Everyone's attention shifted toward me.
I almost said my full name out of habit.
The word stopped before it reached my tongue.
Noro.
People recognized that name. Some recognized it before they ever recognized me. I thought of Redmere, of the way strangers' eyes shifted whenever they heard my family name. I thought of Dad, of the stories people carried like they belonged to them.
"Kin," I said.
Beckham waited a second.
"Just Kin?"
"Yeah."
His eyes stayed on me for a moment longer. Then he nodded and let it go.
"Fine."
Chloe glanced around the street again.
"So now that we all know each other's names, does anyone want to explain why we woke up together?"
Reis looked between us for another second before answering. "Three hundred participants passed the First Trial." She paused, like she was making sure the thought lined up before she said the rest. "If they divided us evenly, six per team would make fifty teams."
Holly's eyes widened slightly.
"Fifty?"
"Assuming every group has six," Reis said.
Zane looked down the street. "Fifty teams wandering around a ruined city with no instructions." He paused, then glanced toward the nearest broken window. "That sounds like something somebody thought was a good idea."
"It tells us the trial probably involves teams," Beckham said. "That's more than we had a minute ago."
Chloe looked at him.
"Team trial doesn't mean we're supposed to work with other teams."
"No," Beckham said. "It doesn't."
The answer made the air feel a little heavier.
Holly's fingers tightened around the edge of her sleeve.
"You think we have to fight them?"
"No idea," Beckham said.
He didn't soften the words.
Holly looked down.
Zane noticed, and his posture shifted slightly.
"Could be the opposite," he said. "Maybe they want teams to help each other. Weird way of telling us, but it's not impossible."
Chloe glanced at him.
"If they wanted cooperation, they could have said that."
"Maybe they wanted to see if people would figure it out themselves."
"That's a big thing to leave unsaid."
"Yeah," Zane said. "Not saying it's a great plan."
Beckham folded his arms.
"We shouldn't assume cooperation until we know what other teams are thinking."
"Maybe," I said.
His eyes moved to me.
I hadn't meant to speak that quickly. The words had just come out, but once everyone looked my way, I kept going.
"But we don't know enough yet to decide they're enemies either."
Beckham studied me for a second.
"Then what are you suggesting?"
I looked past him toward the street ahead. The city continued downhill in a slow slope, buildings packed tightly together on both sides. Farther away, I could see what looked like the top of a tower, cracked down the middle but still standing.
"We know the time limit," I said. "We know we're in teams. We don't know the objective, where we are, or whether other teams are supposed to be threats. Running into the first thing we see without deciding how we're handling any of that seems like a bad idea."
Beckham's jaw shifted faintly.
Chloe looked from him to me.
"He's right."
Beckham didn't answer her right away.
His attention stayed on me for another moment, then he looked toward the tower in the distance.
"There's no footprints besides ours," Reis said from behind.
Everyone turned toward her.
She pointed lightly toward the street around us.
"The dust isn't thick, but it's enough that movement would show. If another team woke up here before us, they didn't stay long. Either this part of the city is empty, or we were placed in separate areas."
Beckham's expression shifted.
Not much.
But enough to show he was listening.
"You're sure?"
Reis looked at the ground again.
"As sure as I can be from standing here."
Chloe turned slowly, taking in the buildings around us.
"So we're probably alone for now."
"For now," Reis said.
Holly looked toward the nearest building.
One of its doors hung open, the wood cracked near the hinges.
"If there are supplies anywhere, it'd probably be inside places like that." She hesitated after saying it, her eyes staying on the open doorway. "I just don't know if walking inside first is a good idea."
Beckham shook his head.
"Not yet. We don't know what's inside."
"That's why we'd check," Chloe said.
"That's also how people get trapped."
Chloe's mouth tightened.
This time, I didn't think Beckham was wrong.
A ruined city full of empty buildings made every doorway feel like a question. Some questions weren't worth answering until we had a reason. Right now, walking into the first open door just because it was there felt like the kind of mistake the trial might be waiting for.
Zane looked down both ends of the street.
"What about high ground?"
Everyone turned toward him.
He nodded toward the cracked tower in the distance.
"If we can get up somewhere higher, we might see more of the city. Roads, landmarks, other teams, anything that looks like an exit. Better than picking a random door and hoping it doesn't collapse on us."
Holly looked at the tower, then away.
"It looks unstable."
"It probably is," Zane said. Then he looked back toward it. "But we don't have to climb the whole thing. Just close enough to see whether it's useful."
Beckham looked toward the tower for a long moment. Then he nodded once. "That works."
I adjusted the strap across my shoulder and stood fully. My legs still felt a little unsteady, but the feeling was fading.
Beckham started down the street first, not waiting for anyone to officially agree.
Chloe followed after him almost immediately, though she kept enough distance to make it clear she wasn't following his lead just because he had moved. Zane walked a few steps behind them, hands loose at his sides, his eyes drifting from one broken window to the next.
Holly hesitated near the wall.
Reis noticed before I did.
"It's fine to stay in the middle," Reis said.
Holly looked at her.
"What?"
"If something comes from the front, Beckham and Chloe are there. If something comes from behind, we'll hear it." Reis glanced at me briefly. "You don't have to walk near the edge."
Holly's grip on her sleeve loosened slightly.
"Thanks."
Reis nodded once and began walking.
I stayed back long enough for Holly to move ahead of me before following.
The street sloped downward as we moved deeper into the city. Up close, the buildings looked even stranger. Some had decorative stonework around the windows, worn smooth by age, while others had symbols carved above the doors that I didn't recognize.
I lived in Central Rivenden when I was younger. I remembered parts of it badly, but I remembered enough.
This place wasn't that.
It wasn't Redmere either.
Redmere was old, but it felt lived in. Even its ancient walls had warmth to them because people still walked beside them every day. This city felt like someone had taken a place that used to be alive and removed everything that made it human.
Beckham slowed near an overturned cart.
The cart itself was still in decent shape. One wheel had cracked, but the wooden frame hadn't rotted. A few empty crates were stacked beside it, and a strip of cloth hung from the handle like someone had tied it there and forgotten to come back.
Chloe crouched beside one of the crates and lifted the lid.
"Empty."
Zane looked over her shoulder.
"Not a single snack."
She dropped the lid back down and glanced at him.
"You hungry?"
"I'm fifteen and confused. That covers most of my day already."
The corner of Chloe's mouth lifted slightly, but she didn't give him more than that.
Holly stopped a few feet away from the cart, staring toward one of the nearby shop windows.
"There are things inside."
We all looked.
The shop was small, its front window dusty but still mostly intact. Shelves lined the inside, and even from the street I could see jars, folded cloth, and small tools arranged carefully along them. Nothing looked looted.
Nothing looked touched.
Beckham stepped closer to the window but didn't go inside.
"Why leave everything?"
No one answered.
There were too many possible reasons.
None of them good.
Reis moved near the window and wiped a small patch of dust away with her sleeve. She looked inside for a few seconds, then leaned back slightly, eyes narrowing.
"What is it?" I asked.
"The cloth," she said.
Chloe stood.
"What about it?"
Reis pointed through the glass.
"It isn't faded."
We looked again.
She was right.
The folded cloth on the shelf still held color. Dark green. Blue. A red that should have dulled if it had sat there for years in sunlight and dust.
Zane's expression shifted for the first time since we had woken up.
"That's weird."
Beckham looked through the glass a moment longer.
"Could be preserved by Matter."
"Maybe," Reis said.
But she didn't sound convinced.
Neither was I.
The longer we stood there, the more the city felt wrong. Not because it was ruined. Ruins made sense. Time broke things down, people left, nature took over.
This was different.
Everything looked like it had stopped moving and stayed that way.
Beckham turned from the window. "We keep going." We continued down the street, but the pace was slower now. Every building we passed felt like it deserved a second look, even though stopping at all of them would have kept us there for hours. The city kept giving us things that looked important without telling us what any of them meant. After a while, I started to wonder if that was the point.
Zane was the first one to say something.
"I don't think we're doing this right," he said, his eyes moving across the street ahead instead of toward any of us. He didn't stop walking, but his voice made everyone slow down a little. "We're checking whatever happens to be in front of us. Shops, windows, carts, alleys. That's not useless, but we still don't know where we are, how big this place is, or what we're supposed to be looking for."
Beckham glanced back at him. "So what are you suggesting?"
Zane lifted his eyes toward the rooftops. "Somewhere high. If we keep moving street by street, we're just going to keep guessing. We need to see the city from above first, then decide where to go instead of walking until something happens."
For a moment, nobody said anything. Then Zane raised his hand and pointed past the buildings ahead of us. Through a narrow gap between two rooftops, I saw a tower rising above the city, old and cracked, with part of its upper wall broken open to the sky.
"I didn't even notice that," Chloe said, staring up at it.
Reis stepped closer to the gap, studying the tower for a few seconds longer than the rest of us. "The top is damaged, but the lower half looks stable from here. We probably wouldn't need to reach the very top anyway. If the stairs inside still hold, even one of the upper levels would give us a better view than this."
Holly looked up at the tower and pulled her sleeve down over one hand. "That's a lot of ifs."
"It is," Reis said. She didn't try to make it sound safer than it was. "But walking through the city without knowing its shape is also a risk. This one at least gives us something useful if it works."
Beckham looked at the tower for a moment, then nodded. "We check it. If it looks worse up close, we leave. Nobody climbs anything that feels unstable, and nobody goes ahead alone."
Chloe started walking first this time, though she only made it a few steps before looking back at the rest of us. "Good. I'd rather risk stairs than spend the next hour staring through dusty windows."
Getting to the tower took longer than it should have. From where Zane had pointed it out, it looked close, but the city didn't move in straight lines. Roads bent around collapsed buildings, alleys ended behind piles of stone, and several times we had to turn back because the way ahead had sunk into a split in the street too wide to cross safely.
Somewhere along the walk, Reis ended up beside me.
It wasn't planned. Beckham and Chloe were ahead, with Zane a few steps behind them, watching the road and rooftops at the same time. Holly stayed in the middle, closer to everyone than before. Reis walked near the back with me, quiet enough that I almost forgot she was there until I noticed her adjusting one of her gloves.
The glove had slipped down slightly, showing part of her hand.
Her knuckles were rough. Not fresh bruises, but old marks, thin scars, and calluses spread across her fingers and palms in a way that didn't look like sword training. I looked down at my own hand for a second, comparing the marks without really meaning to.
"You climb," I said.
Reis looked over at me. "What?"
I nodded toward her hand. "The calluses. They don't look like they're from a weapon."
She followed my gaze, then turned her hand slightly before pulling the glove back into place. A quiet laugh escaped her, not embarrassed, just surprised. "I wasn't expecting anyone to notice that. But yes, I climb. A lot, actually."
"Rock climbing?"
"Mostly cliffs," she said. "Where I'm from, it's not really a hobby. It's just part of living there. If you don't learn how to climb, half the places around you become a lot harder to reach."
I looked at her a little more closely. "Where are you from?"
"Draymoor," she said. "A settlement called Calo. It's built into one of the mountain ranges near the western side of the kingdom, so most of the homes aren't laid out along normal streets. They're carved into the cliffs or built on terraces, with bridges and stairways connecting everything together."
I tried picturing that and couldn't get the image right. "So you're saying if you wanted to visit someone, you might actually have to climb there?"
"Sometimes," Reis said, smiling a little. "Not always, but enough that everyone learns young. There are stairs for most places, but the fastest routes are usually the ones your parents tell you not to use. My father hated when I used them, so naturally I used them whenever I could."
That sounded familiar enough to make me laugh. "Did you get in trouble?"
"Constantly. But in my defense, some of those paths saved a lot of time." She looked ahead as we stepped around a cracked section of stone. "There was one route behind my grandmother's house that cut ten minutes off the walk to the market. It was narrow, and there was one part where you had to cross along the rock with barely any space for your feet, but once you knew it, it wasn't bad."
"That sounds really dangerous."
Reis laughed softly at that, and the sound didn't feel out of place anymore. "Maybe. My grandmother said the same thing. She used to tell me the mountain doesn't care how confident you are, and my father would repeat it every time I came home with another scrape on my hands."
I looked at her glove again. "So that's where all of those came from."
"Most of them." She flexed her fingers once inside the glove. "Some are from rope work, some from falling badly, and a few from being too stubborn to let go when I should have. In Calo, everyone has hands like this eventually. Mine probably just looks worse because I liked climbing more than most people."
I looked back toward the city around us.
Everything here was stone too, but it felt different from what she described. This place had streets, shops, towers, and plazas, but none of it felt connected to anyone. Calo sounded harsh, maybe dangerous, but alive in a way this city wasn't.
"I've never met anyone from Draymoor before," I said. "When people talk about it back home, they mostly mention the mountains, extreme weather, the mines, or the soldiers. I don't think I ever thought about what it would actually be like to live there."
Reis nodded like that didn't surprise her. "People do that with every kingdom. If someone in Calo talks about Rivenden, they usually mention knights, castles, and the capital. Not the smaller villages or towns that have more to it."
For a while, we walked without speaking. The conversation didn't end awkwardly. It just settled, the way some conversations did when neither person felt the need to force another question right away.
By the time we reached the tower, the road had opened into a small square.
The tower stood at the far end, built against the remains of a larger structure that might have once been a guardhouse or part of an outer wall. Up close, the lower stones were thicker than I expected, dark and worn smooth in places, while the upper floors looked far more damaged. Chunks of stone lay scattered near the base, but none of them looked fresh.
Beckham stopped at the entrance and looked inside.
The doorway had no door, just an open arch leading into shadow. Dust covered the floor beyond it, and a narrow staircase curved upward along the inside wall. Thin light slipped through openings higher above, barely enough to show the steps.
Reis crouched near the entrance and brushed her fingers lightly over the dust without disturbing much of it. "No fresh tracks," she said. "If another team came through here, it wasn't recently. The lower stones are still aligned too, so the base probably isn't the problem."
Zane leaned forward enough to see past Beckham. "Probably?"
Reis looked back at him. "I'm not going to promise a ruined tower is safe."
"Fair."
Beckham stepped inside first. "Slowly. If anything shifts, we stop. If the stairs are broken higher up, we don't try to force it."
We followed him in.
The air inside was dry and stale, with the kind of quiet that made every footstep sound louder than it should. The staircase was narrow enough that we had to climb in a loose line, Beckham at the front, Chloe behind him, then Holly, Reis, me, and Zane last. Dust lifted around our boots as we moved upward, catching in the strips of light that crossed the walls.
Nobody talked much during the first stretch.
The tower made it difficult. Every sound bounced strangely inside the rounded stone, and every now and then a loose pebble shifted somewhere above us, making Holly pause until she realized nothing else was falling. Beckham kept the pace slow enough that nobody had to rush, but fast enough that standing still never started to feel worse than moving.
The stairwell opened into a small landing where part of the wall had broken away, giving us a narrow view of the rooftops below. Holly stopped there for a second and took a slow breath, one hand resting against the inner wall.
Chloe looked back at her. "You good?"
Holly nodded, though she didn't move right away. "I'm fine. I just needed a second where I could actually see outside. The inside of this thing feels smaller the longer we're in it."
Beckham waited without saying anything.
That made Holly straighten a little, like she had expected someone to rush her and didn't know what to do when they didn't.
After another moment, she nodded. "Okay. I'm good."
We kept climbing.
The higher we went, the more damaged the tower became. Cracks spread wider through the walls, and in a few places the outer stone had fallen away completely, leaving parts of the stairwell exposed to the open air. Wind slipped through those gaps and moved through my hair, cold enough to remind me how high we had climbed.
When the stairs finally ended, Beckham stepped into the upper room first.
Then Chloe.
Then the rest of us followed.
For a few seconds, nobody said anything.
The city stretched out beneath us in every direction.
It was much bigger than I thought.
From the street, it had felt like we were moving through a ruined district. From the tower, I could see that the district was only one piece of something far larger. Roads branched outward like veins, splitting between neighborhoods, plazas, dried canals, collapsed bridges, and buildings so large they might have once belonged to nobles or officials. Some areas were tightly packed with homes, while others opened into wide spaces surrounded by statues too broken to recognize.
Then I saw the wall.
Black.
Smooth.
Massive.
It rose at the far edge of the city and continued upward until the top disappeared into the clouds. It didn't look like a normal city wall. It didn't have towers, gates, seams, or signs of age. It looked like someone had placed the edge of the world there and decided nothing should exist beyond it.
Holly spoke first, her voice barely above a whisper. "Is that the edge?"
Nobody answered immediately.
Reis moved carefully toward one of the broken arches and looked out. "It surrounds everything we can see from here. The city, the outer districts, even the collapsed areas beyond the canals. I don't see a gate."
Chloe stared at the wall for a long moment. "So we're not in a city."
Zane stood beside one of the openings, his eyes narrowed against the wind. "We're in something shaped like one."
Beckham pulled his attention away from the wall first. "Look for movement. If there are fifty teams, we should be able to spot at least one of them from up here."
We spread around the upper room, each taking one of the openings where the wall had broken away. The wind made it harder to focus, pushing loose strands of hair into my face as I scanned the streets below. At first, everything looked still. Just rooftops, roads, empty windows, and dust moving between buildings.
Then Chloe pointed.
"There."
Everyone shifted toward her side of the tower.
Far below, several streets away, six figures moved through a wide road near another plaza. They were small from this height, but there was no mistaking the way they moved. They stopped every so often, talked among themselves, checked nearby buildings, then continued forward together.
Another team.
Holly leaned closer, then stopped herself before getting too near the edge. "We're not alone after all."
"Good," Beckham said.
Chloe kept watching them. "They're not running. They don't look like they're chasing anyone either."
"No," Reis said. "They look like they're searching."
Zane crossed his arms loosely. "So they probably don't know more than we do."
"Probably," Reis said. "But not definitely."
Beckham's face tightened slightly as he looked down at them. "If we approach them, we don't know how they'll react. They could be friendly, they could be scared, or they could decide getting rid of another team helps them."
Holly looked from him to the team below. "Would someone really do that already?"
No one answered right away.
Chloe folded her arms. "Maybe not already, but Beckham's right that we don't know. The trial didn't say teams were supposed to help each other. It also didn't say they weren't supposed to."
"That's the problem," Zane said. "Everything we do right now is a guess."
I kept watching the team below.
They didn't look dangerous from here. They looked like six people trying not to be lost. But I knew distance could make anyone seem harmless, and if they saw us coming, they might decide the same thing about us.
Still, avoiding them didn't feel right either.
"I think we should talk to them," I said.
Everyone looked toward me.
I didn't rush to explain. I kept my eyes on the team for another second, making sure the thought actually made sense before I said more.
"We don't have to trust them," I continued. "We don't have to tell them everything we've seen either. But they woke up somewhere too, and if they've noticed anything different, that matters. Right now, information is the only thing we actually need."
Beckham studied me for a moment. "And if they attack?"
"Then we leave," I said. "We already know the streets around the tower better than they do, and we know where they are before they know where we are. If they look ready to fight, we aren't going to stand around waiting for them to strike."
Chloe looked back down at the group. "That's reasonable."
Holly didn't seem fully convinced, but she didn't look completely against it either. "What if they're just scared and think we're the ones attacking?"
"Then we don't approach like we're looking for a fight," I said. "We stay visible, keep distance, and talk before we get too close. If they still panic, we back off."
Reis looked at me then, her expression thoughtful. "You're assuming most teams won't want conflict unless they think they need it."
"I am."
"Why?"
I looked down at the team again.
"Because nobody knows the goal yet," I said. "Starting fights before knowing what the trial wants seems stupid. Some people might still do it, but I don't think most teams will want to waste energy this early."
Zane nodded slowly.
"It does," Beckham said, though he still didn't sound ready to move. He looked down at the distant team again, then toward the streets between us and them. "But if we do this, we do it carefully."
He turned toward the stairwell.
"No Matter unless we have to. Nobody wanders off. We approach from the open street, not an alley, and we stop before we're close enough for anyone to feel trapped."
His eyes moved across each of us.
"If something feels wrong, we leave."
No one argued.
Below us, the other team kept moving through the ruined street, still unaware that anyone had seen them from above.
Beckham started toward the stairs. "Let's go."