The days between the cafeteria and the training passed the way intense weeks do. Training in the mornings with the others, evenings with Sylvia in the quieter parts of the grounds where nobody came to watch, bruises that arrived overnight and were still there at breakfast, the particular tiredness that comes from pushing past what you thought your limit was.
And then the morning arrived and it didn't feel like a morning. It felt like something had been waiting.
The academy grounds were unrecognizable.
Every class— first year to sixth assembled across the wide open field in long ordered lines that stretched further than a casual glance could follow.
The noise of it was something physical, a wall of overlapping voices and excitement and nerves and the occasional burst of laughter from someone who had decided that nerves and excitement felt the same from the inside.
In the first year section —
"IT'S FINALLY HERE."
