They initially trained for forty minutes. It wasn’t because they needed warm up but because the training and competition were already approaching, and five days wasn’t enough to waste any of that time.

Additionally, both of them preferred physical motion to settle disputes that words couldn’t resolve.

Seraphina exerted more effort than usual, and William responded in kind.

They had moved beyond unnecessary politeness, engaging like two experienced fighters familiar with each other’s limits and eager to discover new ones.

Her leg supported her well. She had been nursing it so diligently that the muscle was compensating automatically, indicating either good healing or strong stubbornness, probably both.

When both of them finally stopped, gasping for breath, William lowered his practice sword and said, "Kai will be in the secondary library room on the east wing, third floor. He uses it on Sunday mornings and Monday mornings when he wants to avoid being found."

"Does he know we’re coming?"

"He will when we get there."

They cleaned up in the adjacent washroom and walked across the academy in the early morning quiet.

The grounds were still quiet but not empty — a few students walking between buildings, a groundskeeper raking the path near the fountain, and the aroma of breakfast starting to drift from the direction of the dining hall.

Seraphina strolled alongside William, refraining from speaking to fill the silence.

She had come to understand after months near him that silence with William was different from silence with most others. It wasn’t empty; rather, it was a space where he held unspoken thoughts, and pressing into it was less effective than simply waiting.

She waited.

He didn’t say anything between the training hall and the east wing, which was fine. She had gotten what she came for this morning. The rest could develop at its own pace.

The third floor of the east wing was used primarily for senior research and private study, it was quieter than the main library, with smaller rooms that could be reserved for individual use.

Kai had apparently found one that he hadn’t bothered to reserve officially, which Seraphina suspected was entirely intentional.

William paused at the third door on the left and knocked twice.

After a brief pause, a voice from inside said, "Come in."

The room was small, with four walls of shelving, a large enough table for two that Kai was using alone, three chairs, and a window overlooking the eastern gardens.

Kai sat with a closed book in front of him, indicating he had heard them approaching and had ceased pretending to read before they entered.

His reaction upon seeing Seraphina was not one of surprise. It reflected someone who had anticipated her presence and deemed it an acceptable result.

She had only interacted with Kai in limited settings before the expedition: combat class and occasional team practices where he appeared, contributed exactly what was needed, and then departed.

She had assessed him early as someone concealing significant ability behind strategic minimalism, which the expedition had confirmed in a way that made that original assessment feel considerably understated.

She sat down across from him. William took the third chair and pulled it to the end of the table so he was between them, which was spatially neutral and probably deliberate.

"He said all of it," Seraphina said to Kai, without preamble.

Kai looked at William.

"She found me first," William said.

"Mm." Kai considered this for a moment, then looked back at Seraphina with the particular quality of assessment she was beginning to recognize as his version of deciding something. "How much did he tell you?"

"He didn’t say much, just about the Hollow Court. Connected threats. Long timeline, single coordinated actor and his father possibly wanting to kill him" Seraphina kept her voice level. "And I was at the expedition, so I have my own data from that. What I don’t have is context. Mechanism. How you know what you know."

Kai was quiet for a moment.

"What I tell you doesn’t leave this room," he said. "Not because I don’t trust you. Because the information creates risk for whoever holds it, and I would prefer to limit that radius."

"Understood."

Another pause. Kai had a way of pausing that didn’t feel like hesitation — it felt like someone completing a calculation before committing the result to speech.

"I have lived this period of time before," he said. "Multiple times. Each repetition begins at the same point and ends at the same point, and between those points I retain everything from previous iterations. Knowledge, technique, cultivation level, strategic understanding." He watched her face. "This is my eighteenth loop."

Seraphina held his gaze. She was a prodigy, which meant she had spent her entire life being presented with things that shouldn’t be possible and being expected to either disprove them or incorporate them. She had learned to do the latter efficiently.

"That’s why you fight the way you fight," she said.

"Yes."

"And why you knew about the Hollow Court hand signals."

"I have encountered them before. In previous iterations, under different circumstances." He turned his cup on the table — there was tea, she noticed, which meant he had anticipated this meeting enough to prepare.

"The Hollow Court contract is old. It predates this loop’s events by at least the length of time required to establish operational parameters and insert a team. Someone placed it before the competition was announced as this year’s focal point, which means they were planning around a timeline that existed before most of us were aware of it."

"Who’s the target?"

"We don’t know.They hadn’t confirmed when I spoke to them at the clearing." Kai looked at her directly. "The lead operative indicated their primary target was unverified among the group present." 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

"That means the contract specifies a target by identity, not by presence — they needed visual or essence-signature confirmation before acting."

"Which means the target is someone whose identity they don’t have reliable intelligence on."

"Or someone who conceals their identity effectively enough that physical confirmation is required." Kai glanced at William. "Or someone whose involvement in the expedition was unexpected — a target they placed elsewhere who appeared in the wrong location."

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