Words meant nothing until he spoke them.
Silver sat in the back row of Professor Dawes's lecture hall, her pen poised above a notebook that remained stubbornly blank despite forty minutes of attempted note-taking. The tiered classroom buzzed with the low hum of students operating at half-capacity—some genuinely engaged with the material, others clearly running on nothing but caffeine and determination to make it through another morning of academic obligations.
Laptops glowed like small altars throughout the Gothic space, their screens reflecting off the tall windows that let in thin January light. Coffee cups sent lazy spirals of steam into the air that smelled of espresso and the particular mustiness that came from old books and older buildings. The lecture hall itself was one of Yale's grander spaces, with carved wooden panels and stained glass that made even the most mundane discussions feel weighted with institutional gravitas.
