The corridor outside the grand meeting hall was a tomb of silence, the kind of heavy, unnatural quiet that only exists in the heart of the Academy long after the scholars have retired to their beds. The ambient light from the wall-mounted sconces cast a flat, sterile, institutional glow across the polished stone, a brightness that felt less like illumination and more like an interrogation.
It stripped the warmth from the world, leaving only the cold, unyielding reality of the architecture.
Rex and Elizabeth walked in a synchronized rhythm, their footsteps muffled by the heavy air, yet every strike of their boots against the floor sounded like a gavel in the stillness. They had cleared the immediate vicinity of the council chamber, moving far enough away that the voices of the leaders were nothing more than a ghost of a memory, yet the tension of that room still clung to them like the scent of ozone after a storm.
