My everything rebounded off of the arena's dome and was thrown to the earth as it tried to escape to the pull of somewhere other.

Crashed back into physical form, reformed in another place. The echoes of my disembodied limbs barely caught onto what I used to be. Strings of foreign mana reattached something greater to what once was and what was suddenly my body again.

I don't know when I realized I'd been captured by the resurrection array's magic or when I was realizing anything at all again.

But there was one exact moment when I knew I was breathing again.

I shot up. Heaving. Grasping for my chest. The pain was gone, but not forgotten. My body was healed and returned to what it'd been when I'd first stepped onto the arrays.

The bloodworks surrounded me. It looked different now and the same, but the clarity in which I saw everything would only be temporary.

A cold sweat racked me. A fear from the moments of my death that no longer mattered now ate at the edge of my every nerve-ending. Unsatisfaction fell upon my shoulders. It was confusing, but clear all the same.

I'd lost. I'd left Garron and Mile to fend for themselves. I'd not even gained a single point in the royale. I'd embarrassed myself. I'd lost to Cedric. Saints, I'd lost to Cedric.

But I was alive. Only because the arena was a training ground. Only because it was a special place with special rules.

And I was not the first to die.

Many other initiates were around me; all those I saw had been slain. Some sobbed. Others remained silent. A few gripped their knees to their chests. Some stood, crossed their arms, and waited to be released and to go home. I did not join those who stood, not at first; I couldn't. I needed a moment. What did I have to prove to any one of them? Everything? It did not matter. It was over now, for the moment.

Master Steelvein watched us all. Impassively? Empathetically? I didn't know what he felt, only what I did.

He would give a speech later, when all the dead had finally died and come back. Many would leave the Towers forever after he told them he would not judge them for it, and after he still encouraged them to stay—and to fight their fears to forge on to a future worth living. It was during this speech that I'd realize Master Steelvein was a warmer man than many of us thought, somewhere deep inside anyway.

A fourth of our four hundred initiates would be gone in the end. I didn't blame them either. I never would. But I stayed. I wanted to be different than those who fled. What was there in a life of fleeing? I didn't want to have to scramble for survival ever again.

In the end, I decided I believed in the brutality of it all. I'd seen the brutality of life after all. Training to face harsh reality was something I feared I needed, something I clung to. I only hoped I would not become as brutal as life was. Just strong; I only wished to become strong.

The nightmares would come later, then they would fade. And the promise to myself to never lose again would come every day after that.

The feeling of not being myself in my head, of becoming momentarily something indescribable and beyond just a person and then being violently bound back to a small, physical form... it would pass too. Everything would pass except my goals. They had to remain constant. Or I had nothing to guide me. That was my true fear: being lost.

My father was gone. He couldn't guide me anymore.

I had to guide myself.

No one person could guide me to strength but myself. I'd already learned that. On the Blue Peaks, when my father had left us. When he'd been taken by my failure to be strong. By everyone's failure to be strong enough. Even my mother's.

I needed to be able to hold back gods. Those things from the dark other. Things that ate at what was right, and honest, and kind... No. It wasn't about kindness. It was about protecting what was mine and who was mine. They had to be safe. It was a ridiculous goal, but I still believed in it.

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And so I didn't sob like some of the other initiates. I reflected. And my goals were both refined and shattered with that reflection.

Strength was all that mattered. Death showed me that. Everything else that I was, or would try to become, could live under the umbrella of strength that I needed to forge; if it didn't, then someone else could stop it from living altogether.

I saw Kara. Her eyes met mine. She didn't approach me at first. She lowered her gaze. And then she came to me.

"I'm sorry," she said. "For not protecting you."

"So am I," I replied.

"I'm scared to leave," she told me.

I met her eyes. I didn't know what to say. I was just a kid. Or was I?

She averted her gaze. We sat in silence.

"I can't leave," she finally told me.

"Me either," I admitted.

Garron never joined the number of the dead. Time ran out for him; he survived the time limit of the royale. He protected Mile for the entirety of the great duel after I was gone. He kept our team from ranking last in it even. I would never stop being grateful for that. He'd killed, of course, and ambushed multiple mages himself. He was pragmatic; I'd learned that at least on the day I'd first died. That I could count on Garron to kill when it was necessary. And to protect those I cared about for my sake.

***

The library became my home for the next week. Master Elrica gave another class on the formulas of circlecraft. Master Steelvein gave us a day off after the royale; I hadn't expected that; it surprised me.

I took notes in Master Elrica's class, but only to keep track of my theories; I could replay her lectures in my mind's eye as many times as I'd like after all.

Cedric didn't so much as meet my gaze during all our time in proximity to each other after the royale. He'd killed me. It enraged some part of me that he clearly knew he'd killed me. That'd I'd lost to him. That it'd turned out that during our first duel, he'd still been holding back for the sake of the rules despite breaking them in the first place. I'd thought I'd won despite being interrupted by Master Steelvein's summoned monster intervening; in fact, I wasn't so sure the creature hadn't saved me from Cedric truly cutting loose.

Cedric's mana reserves were unnatural, greatly dwarfing mine. The way he'd kept his lightning cloak going at all times was so beyond anything I could do. I had to catch up. Of that, I was sure. But how?

"Hey," Mina approached me as I carefully read a particular tome, "are you okay?"

I looked up to her. I knew she was in my year group of initiates. She'd been at the royale too. "Are you?"

"I survived to the end," she said and sat down next to me.

I met her eyes; they were haunted. All of our eyes, the eyes of all the initiates, were haunted after dying or having to kill to not to.

"I'm sorry," I said to her.

She frowned and then smiled. "I'm sorry too. What are you researching?"

I pushed the thin treatise over to her. "Ways to store spells."

"Alric Neverlyne wrote this," she said. "It's good if you're looking into spell scrolls, but... they're costly and one-time use. This also doesn't really tell you how to make them."

I rubbed the space between my eyes, something I'd picked up from Master Renalt. "I know about spellbooks now, but that's beyond what I can manage to create. I can't get the ingredients before we enter the dungeons, and I don't know the circles to make one. But scrolls don't sound like the way to go either."

Almost two months had passed since I'd started my studies at the Towers. I only had a little over four months to go before we entered the planar dungeons under Highmount. I wasn't ready.

"What are you trying to do?" Mina asked me.

"I fought Cedric during the royale," I said. "He has so much more mana than I do. I can't beat him if I'm trying to preserve mine. I need a way to store my spells. I prepare certain herbs before any battle I go into, but that's not enough. I need to be able to spend mana before I need what I spend it on."

Mina hesitated. "Like Luke does?"

Right. She must have been present during the duel between Luke and Alara. She was a part of our dwindling class after all.

"Like he does," I admitted.

"Why don't you ask him?"

"I don't know him... and his brother... I'm pretty confident Cedric hates me now."

"Luke isn't like that," Mina said. "It doesn't matter to him what his brother thinks of you. It matters what he thinks of you."

"You know him?"

"My mother did," she revealed. "He spends a lot of time in this library. Just not on the first floor, not anymore. I could tell him you wanted to talk to him?"

I sighed. "But why would he help me? Even if he doesn't care that his brother is who I'm trying to beat. I can't give him anything."

"I think you'd be surprised," she said. "Maybe don't mention you want to beat Cedric though?"

I frowned. "That seems wrong."

"Just say you need help," she said. "He likes helping people. He knows what he doesn't want to share and what he does; he's a third year. And he's smart."

"Fine," I said. "Could you... set something up?"

Mina smiled and reached down to pet Mile. "I wouldn't mind. We're friends, right?"

I smiled, despite my weariness. "Right. We're friends."