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He nods. "I've heard."

Several second-years try very hard not to laugh. We continue. The exercises become progressively stranger. Rhyven asks us to close our eyes and identify which direction the wind changed. To estimate the time by shadows alone. To predict where Mara will step before she moves. To identify the only student who has not spoken in the last hour. Every exercise has the same purpose. Attention. Not perfection. Awareness.

By the second hour, everyone's minds are exhausted. No one has drawn a sword. No one has thrown a punch. And yet that may be the most difficult class I've attended since arriving.

The final exercise begins without warning. Rhyven removes six wooden tokens from his pocket. Each bears the Sky Wing symbol. He scatters them into the forest. Not carelessly. Deliberately. "You have twenty minutes." He looks around the Wing. "Find them."

Relief spreads immediately. Finally. Something straightforward. The Wing disperses. Students search beneath logs. Inside tree roots. Along the stream.

I head toward the cliffside. Rhyven watches us from the trail. Hands behind his back. Not helping. Of course.

Ten minutes later not a single token has been found. Frustration begins replacing confidence. I search the same area twice. Nothing. Tessa emerges from behind a fallen trunk.

"Anything?" She asks.

"No. You?" She shakes her head. "This doesn't make sense." I mutter.

"No."

Then— I stop walking. Why doesn't it make sense? Rhyven has spent two hours repeating one lesson. Observe. Not expect. I slowly turn around. Look back toward the trail. Toward him. He's standing exactly where he started. Watching. Not the forest. Us. I look upward. The lowest branch above the path sways gently in the breeze. Something dark hangs from it. One of the wooden tokens. Hidden in plain sight. Not concealed. Ignored.

A slow smile spreads across my face. "I found one." I call. Several students look over. Rhyven doesn't react. He simply says— "Good." Then... "What else?"

I laugh despite myself.

Somewhere behind me, Elias groans. "I think he says that in his sleep."

Rhyven hears him. "I sleep exceptionally well."

"That's somehow worse." I sigh. Even Rhyven's mouth almost twitches.

By the time the second token is found, the entire Wing stops searching the forest. Instead, everyone begins searching themselves. Rhyven has spent the last two hours proving the same point from ten different angles. We keep looking where we expect something to be. Not where it actually is.

"Above you!" Elias shouts.

Anika immediately looks into the trees. "There!" A third token hangs beneath a branch no higher than my shoulder. No camouflage. No illusion. Just overlooked.

Mara smiles quietly. "It was there the whole time." "Yes," Rhyven answers. "And so were you."

The remaining tokens appear quickly after that. One balances on the end of a broken fence post. Another rests inside an abandoned bird feeder. One has been tucked beneath the strap of an unused practice dummy. The final token is sitting openly on the flat top of a boulder nearly every student walked past.

When Mira retrieves it, she looks almost embarrassed. "I swear it wasn't there."

"It was," Selena says. "We all ignored it."

Rhyven nods once. "Exactly." He gathers the six wooden tokens into his hand. "No illusion. No magic. No trick." His eyes move calmly across the Wing. "The obstacle..." He closes his fingers around the tokens. "Was certainty." Silence settles naturally. "When you become convinced something must be difficult you stop noticing simple answers." He looks toward the cliff overlooking the valley. "The opposite is also true. When you assume something is simple you stop looking for danger." He lets the words linger. "Both mistakes kill people."

No one laughs. No one speaks. Rhyven begins walking back toward the Academy. The rest of us fall in behind him. For a long while, only the sound of boots against damp stone fills the mountain path. Then— "Vaelith."

I look up. "Yes?"

"What color were the ribbons on the western bridge this morning?"

I answer without thinking. "Blue."

He keeps walking. "What shade?"

I blink. "Dark blue."