Morning arrived over the Celestial Academy with the particular quality of mornings that don't announce what they're carrying.
The floating islands drifted in the early light with the unhurried ease of things that had been doing this long enough to have stopped thinking about it. Students moved toward their Halls with the purposeful energy of people who had spent their first days orienting and were now in the phase of actually beginning. Spirit beasts called to each other across the open sky between islands with the communicative frequency of things that had found a home large enough to move freely in.
Everything appeared calm. Ordinary. The surface of a day like any other.
Beneath it, ancient things continued moving at their own pace.
