The silence in the Great Hall of Zenith Academy was heavier than the fog that clung to the eastern sector. It was a pressurized suffocating silence broken only by the scratching of three hundred quills against parchment. It sounded like an army of termites devouring a wooden house from the inside out.
The usual arrogance of the student body had evaporated. The posturing. The duels. The sneering about bloodlines. It was all gone. In its place was a collective vibrating panic that smelled of stale coffee and alchemical stimulants and the cold sweat of teenagers realizing that their family names couldn't bribe a piece of paper.
Vane sat in the middle of the room at a desk that felt too small for him. He was tired. Not the bone-deep muscular exhaustion of training with Senna but a jagged brittle fatigue born of three nights spent staring at textbooks he barely understood.
His eyes burned. His hand cramped around the quill. He looked at the floating clock above the dais.
