The rhythmic echo of military boots striking the cold granite floor was the only melody that filled the corridors of Alpha Building that morning. If yesterday the South Paddock was a place where muscle and raw instinct were pitted against magical winds, today, within one of the grand auditoriums of the Sudrath Tech Research Center, the atmosphere had shifted into a suffocating, intellectual silence.
Forty young men sat rigidly in hard wooden chairs. Each faced a desk upon which lay a thick manual bound in black leather—a tome that contained the secrets of the sky. In every corner of the room, infantry soldiers stood like statues. Their hands gripped the Sudrath Spear—the latest automatic rifles that had become the symbol of House Sudrath's burgeoning power. The dark muzzles of the rifles seemed to watch every movement of the cadets, ensuring that not a single whisper, let alone a thought of rebellion, dared to surface.
