Chapter 12
Annalise
The enchanted forest buzzed with tension, alive with shadows and whispers. This time, it wasn’t just me. The entire Academy was scattered across the woods, each student armed with sharp instincts and a singular goal: hunt, or be hunted.
The rules of the test were brutally simple.
Hide. Target. Attack.
Hunt your prey before someone else hunts theirs.
Each of us bore a mark. As a hunter, my task was clear: find the purple patch on my prey's chest and eliminate them from the game.
Hiding had always been my specialty. I’d honed it to perfection, becoming a shadow that even the most skilled hunters couldn’t detect. But today, hiding wasn’t enough. I wasn’t prey—I was the hunter.
I moved silently through the dense undergrowth, scanning for any sign of movement. My sen
