Before dawn, Vis wakes anxious for the Iudicium. Classmates assemble in the quadrum, and Principalis Veridius announces this year’s task: retrieve the Heart of Jovan, guarded by Sextii, and return it to the temple within three days. A Class Three victor becomes Domitor; alternatively, a Fourth can win a private reward. The structure deliberately stokes suspicion—leadership requires loyalty wrested from competing interests.

At a northern plateau, Veridius issues gear and explains the devices. Each Third receives a white medallion that is required to claim victory and can be broken or stolen to eliminate its owner; top-ranked Thirds also get colored stones to track other Thirds’ medallions and the Heart. Every Third must swallow a small internal tracker; if it separates from the medallion, Sextii safety teams will extract and eliminate the student. Fourths receive black medallions that can link exclusively to a Third’s, allowing team-switching, sharing victory, or even a solo Fourth victory if linked. Boundaries restrict movement to the island’s center; entering a three-mile Academy perimeter ends participation, and violence is forbidden.

Indol, leveraging his rank, publicly invites Fourths to betray their Thirds, promising to wait near the Heart until dawn the next day. Departures begin. Veridius warns Vis to keep perspective and not risk his life, then sends Vis’s team into the forest with the Heart-tracker stone. Vis leads Callidus and Aequa west, aiming to avoid early confrontations while keeping close to his hidden objective. At a stream, Vis forces himself to vomit up the internal tracker so the team can later separate it from the medallion and create misdirection.

As they travel, the trio debates tactics: Callidus favors staking out the Heart; Aequa prefers intercepting it en route to the Academy. Seeking an edge, Vis points out the Sextii’s stone tracking circles, implying a new plan—then a sudden crash from the brush interrupts. A dark figure slams into Vis, battering his arm and head; shouts from Callidus and Aequa fade as Vis is overwhelmed and loses consciousness.