The first sunrise over the Celestial Academy didn't behave the way ordinary sunrises did.
Light arrived across the floating mountains not from a single direction but from multiple angles simultaneously, each peak and island catching it at its own elevation and returning it changed — golden where the spiritual energy was densest, silver where the older formations ran closest to the surface, something closer to white at the highest points where the Hall of Sky floated above everything else. The effect was a morning that seemed to come from everywhere, that illuminated without casting the ordinary shadows, that made the whole academy look like something someone had imagined before architecture was fully invented.
Ancient bells rang through the cloud layer.
