Dawn bled red across the rim when Toren kicked off the stone and simply left the world behind.

  One lazy push (bare foot against solid rock) and he was gone.

  A thunderclap cracked the air where he’d been. Dust flattened in a perfect circle. Thirty body-lengths up he stopped dead, arms folded, grinning like gravity had personally offended him.

  Mira rose next, slow and graceful. She stepped off the rim as if walking down invisible stairs, braid streaming behind her like molten silver. At twenty body-lengths she flipped once and hung upside-down, toes pointed at the sky, palms open.

  Vel never seemed to climb. One heartbeat she was on the rim; the next she was a hundred body-lengths above the Pit, motionless, hair floating in a wind no one else felt.

  Then they fought.

  Toren shot at Mira like a falling mountain. She twisted, met his charge with a spinning heel kick that rang off his forearms (BOOM). The shockwave rolled outward in a visible ring and shattered a loose boulder on the far rim into glittering dust.

  Toren laughed, grabbed her ankle, and flung her upward. Mira used the momentum, flipped twice, and dove at Vel. Vel flickered (gone, reappeared behind Mira) and drove a palm between her shoulder blades with a sound like a god clapping. Mira rocketed downward, caught herself ten body-lengths above the Pit, and answered with a spiraling wave of pressure that carved a screaming trench through the air.

  Toren took it on the chest, used the force to rocket sideways at Vel. His shoulder caught her ribs (CRACK). Vel spun away trailing silver light, righted herself thirty paces off, and smiled sharp.

  They collided again and again.

  Shockwaves rippled outward every time flesh met flesh. The canyon walls flashed frantic. Dust devils spiraled from the Pit floor. The sky bruised with the noise.

  Thirty seconds of pure, beautiful violence.

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  They broke apart at the same moment, breathing hard, glowing bright, suspended in a perfect triangle high above the canyon.

  Toren looked down at the lone figure still on the rim.

  “Your turn, glowstick. One at a time. Try not to die.”

  Kael stepped off the edge.

  First round: Toren alone, 10 % power.

  Kael lasted four seconds before a casual backhand sent him spinning earthward. He caught himself twenty body-lengths down, shot back up cursing.

  Second round: Mira.

  She danced circles around him, tapping him with light palm strikes that still felt like sledgehammers. Every time he swung she was somewhere else. He ate dirt three times before he finally grazed her braid with a wild elbow.

  Third round: Vel.

  He never saw her coming. One heartbeat he was upright; the next he was tumbling, a ghost-palm print glowing on his sternum. He learned to ignite faster on the way down.

  The morning burned away in cycles: fall, climb, fall harder, climb faster.

  By noon he could stay in the air thirty seconds against Toren without getting swatted.

  By early afternoon he lasted a full minute against Mira, even landed one clean hook to her ribs that made her laugh in delight.

  By late afternoon he could trade blows with Vel for ten full seconds before she vanished and reappeared behind him to end it.

  Each round ended the same way: one of them sending him plummeting, Kael igniting again before impact, streaking back up angrier and faster than before.

  The sun was bleeding orange when Toren finally called it.

  “Enough,” he shouted, hovering with hands on hips. “Kid’s ready.”

  Kael hung in the air opposite them, chest heaving, glowing steady and fierce. He had bruises shaped like handprints all over his torso and the biggest grin of his life.

  Mira drifted closer, tapped his forehead with two fingers. “Tomorrow we’d start two-on-one.”Vel’s quiet smile said she already knew he could take it.

  Toren opened his mouth to add something crude and proud.

  Then two figures stepped onto the eastern rim.

  Lark and Rhen.

  Lark’s coat hung open, scar livid in the dying light. Rhen stood a pace behind, calm, waiting.

  Lark’s voice cut across the canyon like a blade.

  “Training’s over.”

  He looked straight at Kael, still floating high above the Pit.

  “Halrow Village is marked for Harvest. They come at dusk tomorrow. We leave within the hour.”

  A single beat of silence. The wind itself seemed to stop. Lark said. “Time to see if the sky really belongs to you.”

  Kael looked down once (at the three people who had just taught him how to live in the air, at the broken Pit far below).

  Then he folded his arms, tilted forward, and dove.

  He pulled up at the last second and landed in a crouch that cracked the stone beneath his bare feet.

  Dust settled slow.

  He straightened, met Lark’s eyes, and answered.

  “When do we leave?”