When the second bowls of soup were finished, every single student's nose was flushed red; following a freezing night endured inside a defenseless house, this meal hit them like medicine. Perhaps they couldn't process it right now, but the alternate students who had marched into the Inner Circle before them and lost their garments must have felt the same.
When the bowls were cleared and massive plates arrived—loaded with pasta boiled after being sliced into stick-like strips, alongside three distinct types of meat—they shed every ounce of apprehension they had been hauling on their shoulders up to that moment.
After gulping down murky water disguised as food for months, perhaps even years, the feast laid out before them was something they couldn't even hallucinate in their wildest dreams. Before they could even shake off the shock of this dish, salads arrived alongside frothy ayran, forcing them to anchor their attention solely on eating.
