The last thing Lin Yue remembered was white light, and two words shaped without sound.
Be safe.
Then there was nothing at all. No falling sensation, no wrenching passage through space, none of the familiar disorientation that accompanied the crossing from Game Hall to another Instance. Only a clean and total absence, as though an unseen hand had reached into his memory and folded it shut.
And on the other side of that gap—
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
Chalk against a blackboard.
Lin Yue's eyes opened slowly, and the ceiling above him came into focus—a pale, water-stained surface, mundane enough to be reassuring. A classroom. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, one flickering irregularly as though the fixture were beginning to fail.
He became aware of the following in order.
