Lecture Hall 3B filled at three o'clock. Fifty Obsidian first-years, minus one, and everybody knew which one. Charles's seat in the second row stayed empty, and the guild kids who'd orbited him sat one chair further apart than usual, as if the space needed a buffer.
Vale came in nine minutes late wearing designer sunglasses indoors and carrying a coffee cup that said WORLD'S OKAYEST HUNTER. He set the cup on the podium, surveyed the room, and let the silence run long enough that three separate people shifted in their seats.
"Alright, future disappointments." He pulled off the sunglasses and hooked them in his collar, one eye ice blue, one storm grey. "House standings. Sapphire's up four hundred and eleven. We're second. Ruby's climbing because their coordination scores went up eight percent while ours went down two, which is impressive, because ours went down while one of our squads was inside a dimension that doesn't appear on FGRA maps."
