The change did not arrive with sound.
Neither did it come with light, force or any physical expression that arrived before the perception of it. It arrived as perception first. The specific, total, immediate awareness of something entering the field of the engagement that had not been there a moment before.
Every living human on the field felt it simultaneously.
The Year Threes who had been pushing forward through the thinning front line stopped pushing. Not from instruction, not from a signal, not from any communicated order. They simply stopped, the bodies registering before the minds did that the engagement had just changed in character.
The Year Fours felt it a half-second before the Year Threes, their more developed sensitivity catching the edge of it faster.
The Year Fives felt it before the other students did though.
Elias was the first one to stop moving.
