“Alright, you lot, gather ‘round! Less dawdling, more… well, more *anything*!” Miroslav Bogdanov’s voice echoed in the cavernous, rust-dusted hall, a grandiloquent boom aimed at the eleven shivering, ragged castaways huddled before him. “We’re not here for a tea party. We’re here to become ridiculously, impossibly, inconveniently powerful. And quickly.” Anca, still pale but with a spark of something new in her eyes, adjusted her grip on a rusted pipe she’d found. Radomir, his arm still splinted and aching, scowled, rubbing at a tear in his threadbare grey tunic. The others – a motley collection of first-years, a few third-years who’d failed their Aura evaluations, and even a hulking sixth-year named Stas who’d been exiled for chronic cheating – looked at Miro with a mix of fear and desperate hope. They were the forgotten, the discarded, the raw materials Miro intended to forge into an army. “Today,” Miro declared, striking a ridiculous, wide-legged stance, “we perfect the ‘Standing Stone’ technique. Yes, yes, I know what your pathetic instructors told you. ‘A foundational exercise for inner calm.’ ‘Develops minor root stability.’ Blah, blah, blah. Lies, all lies!” He jabbed a finger at the cracked floor. “The problem wasn’t the technique. It was *you*. And your teachers. Mostly your teachers. They taught you how to *whisper* to your Aura. I’m going to teach you how to make it *scream*.” [Aura: 2,780] [Rest Multiplier: 1.5x] [Teaching Multiplier: 28x] “Anca, you first,” Miro commanded, his expression a theatrical mask of intense scrutiny. “Remember the sensation. Channel the core. The world isn’t a gentle breeze; it’s a collapsing cave. Push back.” Anca closed her eyes, adopting the simple, almost comical stance. Her brow furrowed in concentration, her knuckles white where she gripped the pipe. A faint, almost imperceptible tremor ran through the ground around her feet. Then, a sharp, cracking sound. A spiderweb of fissures bloomed outwards from beneath her worn boots, spreading across the ancient flagstones. [Aura: 2,820] “Better,” Miro drawled, eyebrows lifting at the split stone. “Radomir, your turn. Try not to break anything important. Like your other arm.” The boy grunted, mouth twisted sour. He mimicked the stance, albeit with less enthusiasm. His Aura, fueled by barely contained fury, surged. A low, guttural thrum vibrated through the air. The cracks around Anca’s feet deepened, and a small chunk of masonry detached from the wall and clattered to the floor. [Aura: 2,905] [Aura: 2,990] [Aura: 3,080] “See?” Miro grinned, ignoring the boy's indignant glare. “It’s not just about you. It’s about the resonance. The collective bellow. Now, all of you! Focus. Imagine the entire academy structure, the very bedrock of Kostyanagrad, trying to crush you. Fight back. Breathe chaos into that ‘inner calm’!” The hall filled with the low hum of eleven nascent Auras, each trying to outdo the last. The tremor intensified. Dust rained from the ceiling. Bits of plaster flaked away. The very air grew heavy, like a fist clenching. [Aura: 3,500] [Aura: 4,120] [Aura: 5,000] [Aura: 6,200] “Magnificent!” Miro roared over the increasing din. “You’re all practically geological hazards! You’re not just standing stones; you’re tectonic plates!” A wild heat rose in their chests. They were cleaving the flagstones apart, not with picks or hammers, but with power long pronounced dead inside them. It was exhilarating. As the exercise wound down, leaving a significant portion of the hall’s floor looking like a seismic event had just occurred, Miro noticed something. Amidst the freshly fractured debris, a dark, slumped shape lay half-buried. It wasn’t just more rubble. “Hold,” Miro commanded, his usual theatricality replaced by a sharp edge. He picked his way through the fractured stone, followed by the others. The shape resolved into a human form, desiccated and skeletal, clad in the tattered remains of an older uniform model, its breast insignia worn smooth. The corpse lay against a section of wall that hadn’t been quite as thoroughly pulverized. Its dry finger bones gripped a small, leather-bound notebook. Miro knelt, carefully prying the object from the skeletal grip. It was a diary, its pages brittle and yellowed. He thumbed open a brittle page, scanning faded iron-gall ink. The date had rotted away, but the angular handwriting held firm: *“…the Echo Chasm… not a prison, not a test. It’s a tomb. Headmaster Vodyan’s plaything. They told us the ‘Chasm Collapse Timer’ was a lie, a psychological trick. A countdown to nothing. But I saw the cracks. I felt the tremors. The Timer… it’s not a lie. The lie is what they told us it was counting down to. It’s not nothing. It’s everything. Everything to us. And to them. They need it to collapse… to seal something. Something they fear. But if we break free… if we shatter the walls…*” The line broke off midway across the leaf, trailed by an ink smear where the quill tip had snapped. Miro’s smirk thinned into a flat crease. The interface digits continued to glow against the dark stone, an arithmetic tally measured against a closing perimeter. Before he could tuck the notebook into his coat, the entire Chasm shuddered. Not a localized tremor from their Aura training, but a violent, deep-seated vibration that shook the very core of the colossal skeleton around them. Grit showered from the cavern roof in grey ribbons, drowned out by the shriek of grinding bone strata. “What in the…?” Radomir choked, stumbling. The shock threw half the recruits onto their knees. Miro braced himself against a massive rib bone, his eyes darting around, searching for a source, a sign, anything. Then, in the center of the hall, where the floor had been most heavily fractured, a blinding flash of emerald light erupted. The light pulsed, sucking in the surrounding gloom, coalescing into a shimmering vortex. It collapsed inward with a dull pop, leaving a small, fragile figure sprawled across the broken stone. Her hair, pale as chalk, spilled across her face; her uniform jacket swallowed her narrow shoulders. “Miro…?” Alina Bogdanova whispered, her voice a thin, reedy sound, barely audible over the settling dust.

Army of the Forgotten