Morning came to the academy in slow pieces. Light filtered in through the tall windows and stretched itself across desks that still held papers, folded uniforms, and tools that had been set down long after midnight.
The quiet from the night before did not disappear. It simply stretched thinner as the sound of movement began to fill the halls, building room by room until the entire campus felt awake.
Announcements echoed through the corridors in steady, calm voices. The speakers repeated the exact instructions without urgency because they did not need to be obeyed with urgency.
"All participants report to your assigned dorm sectors for pre-deployment inspection. All support units confirm calibration data before zero five hundred." It sounded like the kind of voice that had done this for years and expected no surprises.
Repair drones floated between buildings, scanning armor plates and checking clamps with patient blue lights. Their rotors hummed quietly as they passed.
