Night settled over the Celestial Academy with the specific quality of nights that arrived at altitude — clearer than ordinary nights, the stars brighter without the ordinary atmosphere to diffuse them, the darkness itself having texture rather than simply being the absence of light. Floating islands drifted quietly beneath that endless sky with the patience of things that had been drifting long enough to stop noticing the drifting.
Students cultivated in their respective halls. Elders meditated in spaces designed for meditation over centuries. Spirit beasts slept peacefully in the dormitories and training grounds and the spaces between spaces that the academy maintained for creatures that didn't fit into ordinary categories.
Everything appeared normal.
