The moon was just beginning to rise, casting a silver sheen across the rooftops of ElderGlow Academy, when Elias returned to the dormitory tower reserved for final-year champions.
The halls were quiet — not from emptiness, but reverence. Even the chatter of other students seemed to hush as he passed by. Whispers followed him like dust trails on polished marble.
He didn't notice.
Or if he did, he didn't care.
His footsteps echoed softly as he climbed the final flight of stairs toward his room.
But when he reached the last turn, he paused.
Someone was already waiting at his door.
It wasn't a fellow student.
Nor a faculty member.
It was a woman — older than him by a decade perhaps, dressed in traveling leathers with a long gray braid down her back and an aura that didn't waver even in silence.
She wasn't smiling.
But she wasn't hostile either.
Elias approached carefully, stopping a few paces short.
"You're early," he said.
