By the time breakfast was over, the stares had grown sharper. The words harsher. Basically every cadet in the mess hall was talking about the same thing. That he was selfish. With how fast it had spread, and how pointed the narrative was, it had clearly been engineered.
Someone was working against him.
The other Calderalth youths noticed the attention too. They whispered to him, trying to draw his eye to it. Yet he shut them down, claiming it didn't matter.
They were given an hour to finish breakfast. By ten, soldiers ushered them to their next training. Combat.
Again, they were divided by their tiers and taken to different parts of the fortress to train.
The first part of training involved weapon formation. They simply stood in place, continually forming and dispersing their desired weapon. Their instructor, Norak, as Zephyrion had eventually learned, walked slowly through their lines, barking words.
