The golden light was gone.
Luca remained beside his bed, staring at his arm with a troubled expression as the quiet of the dormitory slowly settled around him. Outside the window, Arcadia Academy had fallen into the peaceful rhythm of night, with only the distant glow of magical lamps illuminating the pathways between the buildings.
He slowly lowered his sleeve.
For a moment, he wondered whether he had simply imagined it.
After everything that had happened recently, perhaps his mind was merely becoming overly sensitive to anything remotely unusual. The vision, the battlefield, the creature, the strange words that had been cut off before he could hear them, and now the Vice Dean's suspicious questions had all begun piling together inside his thoughts.
Luca sat on the edge of his bed and rubbed his temples.
"Maybe I'm thinking too much."
He remained there for several moments before finally lying down.
Yet sleep did not come easily.
