The Imperial Academy's outer gates had barely closed behind them when the campus unfolded like a deliberate statement of power and permanence.
It was not merely large. It was engineered to make individuals feel small against the institution. Stone paths, worn smooth by time, stretched between buildings whose scale spoke of unyielding history: lecture halls with arched windows tall enough to swallow entire afternoons of light, training yards where the distant clash of practice blades echoed like ritual, and beyond them, the Elite District, twelve numbered villas arranged in a gentle crescent around a private practice field reserved for the academy's most dangerous students. Ancient trees lined the main avenue, their leaves rustling in a breeze that carried the faint scent of old parchment, polished steel, and the sharp ozone tang of active spellwork.
