The Core Myst examination settled over the hall like a weight.
Once the bell rang, the second-years had no room left for jokes, complaints, or last-minute panic disguised as conversation. Pens moved over parchment in uneven rhythms, some steady and confident, others slow enough to suggest the student holding them was bargaining with every sentence.
The silence was not peaceful. It was dense, filled with the scratch of writing materials, the occasional turn of a page, the shift of a chair, and the quiet suffering of nearly a hundred students realizing that Core Myst theory was far less friendly when arranged into formal questions.
