The Royal Train did not merely travel; it conquered the landscape, its massive iron wheels biting into the steel rails with a rhythmic, thunderous cadence that vibrated through the floorboards of the private carriage. Glinda spent the hours before dawn pacing the narrow confines of her cabin, the rhythmic clatter acting as a metronome for her racing thoughts.
She did not sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the Shiz University crest—that elegant, silver 'S'—and heard the dry, academic cadence of the letter threatening her corruption. She was an alumna returning to a home that had never truly been hers, a place where she had been trained to perform "Goodness" while the foundations of the world were built upon calculated cruelty.
As the sun began to bleed over the horizon, painting the Gillikin Country in hues of bruised violet and burnt orange, the train began its long, winding ascent into the northern mountains.
Shiz University sat atop a plateau of polished white granite, its architecture a testament to the Wizard's obsession with permanence and grandeur. The golden spires of the library pierced the morning mist, shimmering with an artificial, gilded light that made the entire campus look like a mirage dropped into the rugged, industrial heart of the North.
"We are arriving, Your Goodness," Mistress Malla's voice crackled through the cabin door, sharp and expectant. "The Chancellor's delegation is waiting on the platform. Your hair—the humidity has done something dreadful to the chignon."
Glinda took a steadying breath. She walked to the mirror, smoothing the lines of her lavender day dress, and forced her face into the mask of the bubbly, charming, and utterly vacant "Glinda the Good". She checked her reflection one last time—the porcelain skin, the wide, artlessly innocent hazel eyes—and then she turned the handle.
The train platform at Shiz was a sea of velvet and stiff starch.
The Chancellor of the University, a man named Merriman with a face like a dried apple and eyes that darted with frantic political calculation, waited at the head of a line of faculty members. Behind them stood a sea of students, their faces a mix of manufactured awe and cold, disciplined curiosity.
"Your Royal Goodness!" Merriman called out, his voice echoing too loudly in the thin mountain air. He bowed with such precision it looked painful. "It is the singular honor of our lifetime to welcome you back to the halls where you first discovered your... brilliance."
"Oh, Chancellor! Please!" Glinda chirped, stepping off the train and beaming at the crowd, her voice carrying that melodic, shimmering lilt that made the students in the front row giggle. "You make me sound like a scholar! I was much more interested in the History of Magic's tea breaks than the actual History, if I recall correctly!"
The faculty chuckled politely, but Glinda's gaze was already drifting toward the library—the towering structure of glass and gold that anchored the campus. Look beneath the library, the Ink Ghost had ordered.
"We have prepared a lecture in your honor," Merriman continued, gesturing toward the main quadrangle. "And a tour of the new engineering wing—the one you so graciously authorized funding for before the Wizard's... departure."
"I wouldn't miss it for the world," Glinda said, her smile never wavering, even as she felt the heavy, vibrating weight of the Grimmerie inside her small leather satchel.
As the delegation moved forward, Glinda caught a flicker of movement in the third-story window of the library. A figure in a dark academic robe watched them—not with admiration, but with the cold, detached interest of a scientist observing a specimen under a microscope.
Glinda waved at the crowd, her wrist performing that practiced, rhythmic swivel, while her mind calculated the distance to the basement vault.
"It's so good to be home," she whispered to the empty air, her voice sweet and hollow, while behind her eyes, the hunter was already calculating how to tear the University apart from the inside.