The eighteenth morning did not begin with urgency. It began with absence. Not the absence of people—the academy was as full as it had always been—but something else. Something harder to define. The tension that had once filled every corner of the courtyard was no longer there. The sharp divide, the constant comparison, the quiet pressure to prove something at every moment—it had faded. Not disappeared. Just… changed.
Students still moved early. They still prepared. They still trained. But there was no restless energy behind it anymore. No forced intensity. No need to be seen. Because now—they had already been seen. And that changed everything.
