Lucas didn't sleep well.
It wasn't nightmares. It wasn't fear in the clean, obvious way. It was the feeling of something unfinished sitting in his chest, like a stone he kept turning over without finding a smooth side. Every time he drifted toward sleep, his body remembered pressure, remembered the way the grid had tried to fold around them, remembered how close he'd come to forcing mana the wrong way just to make the moment stop.
He woke before the bell, washed his face in cold water, and stood in front of the mirror longer than he meant to. His eyes looked the same. His posture looked the same. But when he breathed, he could feel the difference in where the tension lived. It didn't gather in one tight point anymore. It spread, like a net you had to keep evenly weighted.
He left the dorm and walked the corridor in silence, letting his thoughts settle into something he could carry without tripping.
Halfway to the training wing, his interface blinked.
Not a red alert. Not urgent.
