The assembly hall held a different quality from the last time it had received the Shadow Novices .
At the Processional — the group had arrived as candidates . The Hall's stone floor and the stone walls and the shadow domain concentration in the air above the triple circle had received them as raw material . As candidates whose shadow affinity had been confirmed and whose domain stage had not yet been assigned and whose institutional identity within the Temple of Caedis was still the specific conditional identity of someone who had passed through the Cruentus Mouth and had not yet been told what they were .
Now — the hall received ten practitioners . Four of them the same Shadow Novices who had stood in this space on their first day . Six of them faculty and support staff who occupied the hall with the specific quality of people for whom the hall was simply a space rather than a threshold .
The difference between those two qualities was present in how the space held them .
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