The day after the underhalls, every surface in the Academy seemed glazed: water beading on banisters, tile sweating beneath Soren's bare feet, even the air thickened with a glassy residue that made vision smear at the corners.
The windows offered nothing but a scalded-pale sunrise and the ghost shapes of students traversing the frost-burned lawn. Soren moved through the dorm corridor before first bell, and heard every footstep, every brush of wool, as though the building's architecture had developed a second echo.
Each sound came with the normal report and then a half-beat later, a resonance, as if some new cavity had opened up beneath the world.
He traced the route to the freshly sanded shower room, noting how even his breath produced a faint twin—expelled, then a fainter hiss that burrowed behind the walls.
