Registration closed at the eighteenth hour on a Tuesday. Vane confirmed his band update on the walk back up the hill and didn't look at it again.
There was nothing more to see. Second year, fifth practical evaluation, adversarial format. Pair registration: confirmed. His name and Ashe's name linked in the system, locked in for the next seventy-two hours. The decision was made. Everything else was waiting.
The campus changed across the five days in the way social weather always changed before something significant. Not in any single visible thing but in accumulated texture. The dining hall arrangements shifted. The paths between buildings developed new patterns. Former squads navigated the space between them with that particular geometry of people who weren't enemies and weren't quite the opposite.
