The residence hall greeted Lucavion with the peculiar silence that belonged only to hours when students had yet to remember they were students.
The lamps along the walls had begun dimming as morning crept through the eastern windows, leaving strips of blue-gray light across the stone. Somewhere below, a servant pushed a cart through the lower passage, and porcelain rattled softly before the sound disappeared beneath the stairwell. Water ran behind one of the bathing-room walls. Farther down, a door opened for several breaths before whoever stood behind it apparently reconsidered the wisdom of beginning the day and closed it again.
Lucavion could sympathize.
