The first year ended the way most significant things ended.
Not with ceremony but with accumulation — the gradual weight of final classes and last sessions and the particular quality of conversations that both people knew were temporary goodbyes dressed as ordinary talk. The Academy had a rhythm and the rhythm had reached its natural pause, the institution exhaling after a year of sustained pressure the way a held breath released when the reason for holding it had passed.
The announcement had come from Sariah three days prior.
