The seven days that followed that meeting in the library were, for most students, a return to the bureaucratic tedium of academic life.
For me, however, they were a marathon of power consolidation and technical refinement.
The Royal Academy campus was bustling with the presence of new faces; substitute professors arrived to fill the gaps left by those who had cowered or perished during the barrier incident.
The atmosphere was one of forced discipline, as if the administration was desperate to sweep the recent chaos under the stone carpet of the central courtyard.
I observed all of this from a privileged position: the center of attention.
The rumor of my engagement to Rebeca Fou Holfort was no longer just gossip; it was a confirmed fact that altered the social gravity of the school.
One afternoon, as I walked through the inner gardens, Aria's voice echoed in my mind with crystalline clarity, now that the System signal was stable.
