Outside his window, academy spires reached toward stars that had witnessed centuries of careful neutrality serving advancement over politics.
Tomorrow would test whether such principles could survive in a world where knowledge itself had become a weapon wielded by forces whose capabilities challenged everything established authority thought it understood about the limits of independent power.
But dawn brought with it not conflict, but the careful implementation of partnership that would reshape both institutions in ways neither had fully anticipated.
The morning sun cast crystalline light through the academy's great halls as Headmaster Valdris stood before the assembled Council of Senior Scholars, the materials from his midnight visitor arranged on the central table like artifacts from a more advanced civilization.
