Niko Vale had the expression of a boy who had accidentally become plot-relevant and wanted to file a complaint.
I sympathized.
Plot relevance was rarely good for life expectancy.
The old silver maintenance line crawled through the left corridor like a vein that had survived beneath the Bloodstone. It did not match academy design, Mage Tower script, or any Floor Six layout I remembered from Throne of Ruin. That meant three possibilities.
One, the game had omitted boring infrastructure.
Two, the real academy had bones the game never bothered to show.
Three, Professor Malcris had prepared a corridor-shaped insult.
All three could kill us.
"Stay close," Aiden said.
"To you?" Liora asked.
"To the formation."
"That sounded less annoying."
