The three weeks didn’t pass so much as thin.

  They stretched, then blurred, then folded in on themselves until Lysara stopped trying to track them. She remembered sleeping, but not where the nights ended. Eating, but not when it happened. The Academy kept its pace and she kept up, carried forward by schedules she didn’t look at because they were already waiting for her.

  Prep became repetition.

  Repetition became background.

  The pouch Rowana had given her stayed tucked against her side, a small, steady weight that grounded her when everything else felt oddly unreal.

  Sometimes she realized she was already in the lab. Sometimes she left it without remembering standing. Instructions came half-finished and were somehow complete. Unit X-17 formed around her without announcement—spacing settling, movement smoothing, people adjusting without speaking.

  Xyrion spoke less. Nothing was missed.

  By the time the final notice appeared, it felt less like an instruction and more like confirmation of something that had already happened.

  They gathered at the gate without ceremony.

  No goodbyes. No pause. Leaving had already occurred somewhere in the blur.

  The hum beneath the stone rose into her bones, familiar and wrong at the same time. Light folded inward—

  —and the world stepped sideways.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The air on the other side was cool and wet, smelling of moss and sap and leaf rot. Birds called overhead, sharp and insistent, threading sound through the canopy in a way that made her chest loosen despite herself.

  The Green Forest.

  Not the one she knew.

  This edge felt broader, less wounded. The trees stood farther apart, light filtering through in pale sheets instead of breaking sharply against trunks. The ground sloped gently instead of closing in. Familiar, but angled differently—as if she were seeing a face she loved from the other side.

  A voice cut through the haze.

  “Form up. March.”

  They moved.

  Stone gave way to earth, boots sinking just enough to register. Packs settled. Armor found its rhythm. The forest deepened ahead of them, green layering into darker shades without losing its warmth.

  Birdsong followed them for a while before thinning—not vanishing, just pulling back.

  Scouts ranged forward and returned with quiet reports. Clear paths. Recent rooting. Wide churned stretches where boars had torn through undergrowth, earth exposed and drying. The signs were heavy, overlapping, too frequent to be coincidence.

  But the forest was alive.

  It watched without tension. Leaves stirred. Insects hummed. Nothing fled.

  They kept moving.

  The camp site emerged gradually—a low bowl in the land, open enough to breathe, close enough to the tree line to feel held rather than threatened. Someone called it Site Alpha. The name slid past her without catching.

  Tents rose as if they belonged there. Wards settled into place with a low, steady hum that threaded through the air and into her chest, not unpleasant, just present. People moved with purpose, but the edges stayed soft, dreamlike, as if the forest absorbed sharpness.

  She was counted. Positioned.

  Night came gently.

  Birdsong faded into insects and wind.

  When the scouts returned, they brought nothing alarming. No signs of movement. No deviation worth naming.

  That should have been reassuring.

  Lysara lay awake listening to the layered sounds of the Green—alive, breathing, familiar in ways that made her ache with something like fondness. This forest was not the one she had fallen in love with.

  But it shared the same language.

  She tried to remember when the three weeks had ended.

  She couldn’t.