The Academy sprawled beneath the early morning sun like a sleeping giant carved from mountain stone. Headmaster Sariah walked through corridors that had witnessed centuries of exceptional talent, her footsteps echoing softly against polished floors that reflected dawn light streaming through crystalline windows. The architecture was impossible by conventional standards, structures that defied gravity and geometry to create spaces that felt both intimate and vast simultaneously.
She'd walked these halls as a student once, decades ago when her hair hadn't carried silver streaks and her bones hadn't accumulated the weight that came from reaching humanity's absolute peak. The Academy had shaped her, pushed her past limits she hadn't known existed, forged her into someone capable of breaking through barriers that stopped nearly everyone else at Grandmaster rank.
