He looked up. It was Lena, the girl who could solve quadratic equations in her sleep. She didn’t look at the book; she looked at his frantic scribbling.

For the next hour, the library transformed. The GDZ wasn't a cheat sheet anymore; it became a Rosetta Stone. Lena showed him how Kulabukhova’s problems were designed like puzzles: once you found the "key" theorem, the rest of the numbers fell into place like dominoes.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, Artyom closed the yellow book. He realized the GIA wasn't an execution; it was a hurdle. And with the right guide—and maybe a bit of help from a friend—the "Kulabukhova gauntlet" was finally starting to make sense.