The morning after their return felt oddly muted, as if the air had chosen to hold back its usual energy. A thin mist clung to the ground, and the sky showed the pale color that appears between the last moments of night and the first hint of sunlight. Kael woke with the sound of the Archivist's calm voice lingering in his mind. It left him with a nagging feeling that something had changed, not in the world around him, but in the quiet parts of his awareness where thoughts gather before taking shape. He sat on the edge of his cot for a while, rubbing his eyes and waiting for the heaviness in his limbs to fade. It didn't.
After dressing, he stepped into the corridor leading to the refectory, where the smell of warm grain and spiced broth drifted faintly through the halls. Those scents usually brought a sense of grounding, but today they felt distant, more like echoes of something well known than the real thing. Kael followed the scent anyway, allowing the routine to draw him in.
Several initiates were already seated, speaking in hushed tones that faded to silence when they noticed him. Some gave hesitant nods, unsure of how friendly they were allowed to be with someone involved in an official investigation. Others kept their heads down, pretending to focus on their breakfast. This shift in atmosphere felt unsettling to Kael. These people typically treated him with casual indifference, but the stiffness in their posture suggested that news of the mirror incident had spread faster than he expected.
Brion sat alone near the far window, hunched over a steaming bowl. Kael approached quietly and pulled out the chair opposite him. Brion looked up, startled at first, then a smile crept onto his face.
"You look half-awake," he said, sliding a loaf of golden bread toward him. "Eat something before you faint on someone important."
Kael took the bread and tore off a piece. "Feels like the air is heavier than usual. Did the Archivist say anything to you after we left?"
"Not a word," Brion replied between bites. "But he sent a message to the instructors at dawn. Everyone's acting like something important has begun. I don't think it's just about the mirror."
Kael thought about this in silence. Something had begun—he felt it, like a vibration quietly moving through the stone beneath him. The mirror's broken surface had offered him a glimpse of something he couldn't yet define. Although the Archivist had provided nothing but cryptic reassurance, that glimpse left a mark, faint but clear.
As he ate, the noise around them gradually increased, though it remained cautious. A few initiates whispered about shadows moving on their own in abandoned chambers. Others theorized about breaches in the outer wards. These rumors had likely been around for years, but in light of Kael's involvement with the investigation, they felt sharper. The thought that something unseen could enter a place meant for learning and safety made people uneasy.
When Brion finished his meal, he leaned back in his chair and stretched. "Instructor Avel requested that we report to the western training grounds before midday," he said. "She's gathering everyone who returned from assignments."
Kael nodded. "Is this another evaluation?"
"Probably. But if it is, they're being unusually quiet about it."
After clearing their dishes, they left the refectory and walked down a lane of tall stone arches that connected the central buildings. The late morning sun finally broke through the haze, casting bright patterns on the ground, yet the warmth did little to ease Kael's unease. Small details kept grabbing his attention—the soft echo of their footsteps seemed a little delayed, the shadows cast by the arches stretched at odd angles, and the air occasionally had a metallic taste he couldn't explain.
At first, he brushed these off as remnants of his anxious thoughts. But after noticing one of those oddities for the third or fourth time, he slowed down. Brion halted a few steps ahead and raised an eyebrow.
"You alright?"
"Something feels… off," Kael said carefully. "Do you hear anything strange?"
Brion listened for a moment and shrugged. "Just our steps and the wind. What are you hearing?"
Kael almost said it—almost admitted that the sound of their footsteps seemed to fall into a hollow notch, as if some spaces swallowed sound while others stretched it out. Instead, he shook his head. "Nothing important. Let's keep moving."
The training grounds were already busy when they arrived. Instructor Avel stood on a slight rise, watching as the initiates formed loose groups. Her posture was relaxed but composed, and her expression suggested she had anticipated something disruptive for a long time.
"Gather around," she called, her voice carrying clearly across the field.
The initiates formed a loose semicircle. Kael and Brion took the back row, where the sun felt warmer and the earth smelled freshly turned. Avel waited until the murmurs quieted, then clasped her hands behind her back.
"Some of you have heard bits of yesterday's events," she began, "and most of those bits are exaggerated. Ignore whatever you've heard from excited tongues. What happened in the Archive is being looked into thoroughly, and until those investigations are complete, speculation will only confuse things."
Whispers flickered across the group, but she raised a hand to quiet them.
"However," she continued, "the incident shows a need we have overlooked for too long. Many of you have progressed without learning how to notice disruptions in the flow of your surroundings. You rely on what your eyes and ears tell you, as if the world presents itself fully without effort."
Kael felt a slight prickle at the back of his neck. Avel's words matched uncomfortably with what he had sensed earlier—the misplaced shadows, the uneven echoes. He straightened up instinctively.
Avel scanned the group with sharp, assessing eyes. "You will learn to notice the things that usually slip past your senses. For the next several days, our focus will shift from physical drills to perceptive training. Some of you may find this boring, but those who stick with it will find that the world has layers you've never acknowledged."
The prickle intensified. Kael crossed his arms, feeling as though she spoke directly to him.
"Form pairs," Avel instructed. "Find a partner whose presence you can stand for a while."
Brion gave Kael a light shove. "Guess we're stuck with each other."
Kael managed a smile. "Wouldn't have it any other way."
Once pairs were formed, Avel told them to spread out across the grounds, making sure each pair had enough space for quiet focus. She walked among them, offering simple tasks: noticing changes in the sound of shifting grass, observing the temperature differences as one moved from shadow to sunlight, listening for subtle tremors beneath the earth that indicated shifts in distant currents.
Kael knelt in the short grass while Brion watched him. The ground felt cool beneath his palms. A soft breeze brushed against his skin. At first, everything seemed normal, which only made the earlier strangeness more unsettling. He tried to focus on the earth's quiet hum, the tiny movements of insects, the gentle rustle of leaves above.
Minutes stretched on. The sounds sharpened gradually: each blade of grass bending under the wind, each grain of soil shifting beneath his fingers, each faint vibration moving through the ground. Yet among these sensations, a faint, discordant thread remained—so subtle he almost thought he imagined it.
"Kael?" Brion asked softly. "You look tense."
"There's something beneath all of this," Kael murmured. "Something I can't place. It's like a hollow space where sound should be."
Brion lowered himself beside him. "Did you feel this before today?"
"Only after we returned from the Archive."
Brion frowned. "Maybe Avel's training will help you make sense of it."
Kael hoped so, though he suspected the answer to that hollow feeling wouldn't come easily. It felt linked to the mirror incident, as if something had brushed against him without fully revealing itself.
The training continued for hours. Avel's instructions became more complex, urging them to perceive movement patterns in seemingly still things, to detect faint distortions in the air where temperature shifted unevenly, to isolate distant footsteps by their resonance rather than their volume. This type of perception required intense focus, and most initiates struggled with it. Brion did reasonably well, showing quiet patience, but Kael sensed things more acutely than he planned. Each attempt to concentrate on ordinary details drew him back to that faint mismatch between the world's natural rhythm and the subtle disturbance hovering just beyond clarity.
As the sun dipped lower and the shadows lengthened, Avel called everyone back to the rise.
"Today's progress was uneven," she said, "but that is expected. Perceptive training rarely shows immediate results. What matters is consistency. You will continue these exercises throughout the week, and by the end, I expect each of you to notice at least one pattern you overlooked before."
She dismissed them afterward, leaving the field buzzing with speculation. Some initiates complained about the difficulty of the tasks. Others were excited at the thought of unlocking hidden senses. Kael listened absently as he and Brion walked back toward the main buildings, though his mind often returned to the strange hollowness he had sensed.
At the entrance to their lodging hall, Brion paused. "If what you're sensing is related to yesterday's incident," he said cautiously, "do you think it's dangerous?"
Kael looked toward the horizon, where the last rays of sunlight stretched like thin banners across the sky. "I don't know," he admitted. "But I think it's important."
Brion clapped him on the shoulder. "Then figure it out. Just don't do anything reckless."
"I'll try."
"But you won't promise."
"Would you believe me if I did?"
Brion laughed. "Not at all."
They parted ways inside the hall. Kael returned to his small room and sank onto the cot, letting exhaustion wash over him. Yet sleep wouldn't come. His mind circled around the same questions, tangled and persistent. Eventually, he rose and approached the narrow window overlooking the grounds.
Outside, the training field lay quiet under a pale moonlight. The grass moved in faint waves, and the shadows cast by the trees stretched long and thin across the earth. Kael watched the stillness, searching for the strange pattern he'd sensed earlier. He opened the window slightly, letting the cool air wash over him.
The world felt calm on the surface, but beneath that calm, he sensed the same faint inconsistency—the hollow space where sound should flow evenly, the subtle imbalance in the way shadows pooled, the slight delay in the echo of distant footsteps.
Whatever this disturbance was, it hadn't vanished with the setting sun. It lingered, subtle yet persistent, like an unfinished whisper carried from the mirror's broken surface—something not yet fully formed, yet already reaching toward him.
Kael rested his hands against the windowsill, his breath steady as he listened to the quiet.
He didn't know what awaited him in the coming days, but the world had already begun shifting, piece by piece. He stood at the edge of understanding something far larger than himself.
And somewhere in that shifting, the hollow between his footsteps waited to be filled.