The dormitory corridor held ten assigned rooms and five that were not .
The ten occupied rooms carried the specific shadow domain quality of spaces that had been claimed — the Temple's architecture having registered their occupants during the Processional and oriented itself toward them permanently afterward . Doors , shadows , the ambient concentration of the corridor itself — all fractionally aware of the ten beings behind ten closed doors in the specific way the Temple's architecture was now aware of everything it had claimed .
The five unoccupied rooms did not carry this quality .
Their doors were closed . Their spaces were prepared — sparse pallets , grey stone walls , the minimal furnishing of the Shadow Initiate residential tier . Everything in place . Nothing missing except the occupant the corridor had determined was not a useful fracture .
Their shadows on the corridor wall fell exactly as physics dictated .
