The rain had stopped sometime before dawn, though the sky above Yinshan Academy hadn't bothered to clear for it. Gray light pooled across the courtyard, flat and directionless, the kind of morning that made the flagstones look wet even after they'd dried. Breakfast had been quiet — quieter than usual, which was saying something for a group that had learned, across five instances and twelve people, to eat in careful silence.
Afterward, they drifted out into the courtyard the way water finds a low point, without anyone deciding to.
Lin Yue stood a little apart from the others, eyes tracking the building across the courtyard — the academic wing, its windows dark and even, its roofline just slightly wrong against the map he carried in his head. He'd walked that wing four times now. He was fairly sure it had six more windows on the second floor than it should have.
