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Chapter Thirty-Six

I tried to step lightly as I crept through the forest, the darkness of the night feeling thick after all the festivities. I clutched my moss-covered lantern tightly. Aside from the moon and stars overhead, it was pitch-black in the forest.

The arrow formed by the paper note led me to the campus’s wall, where I crouched and saw the now-familiar tiny arch on the brick. Another gust of leaves flew to me, and I opened a folded sheet of paper. Angling my lantern toward it, I began to read.

Your task is to collect one item from the academy’s grounds that will be useful to our goal of preserving the academy from outside influences. What you choose is up to you. For the purposes of this exercise, we will call this your artifact.

My eyes moved further down the page, where text in a smaller typeface contained additional instructions.