A corridor without witnesses was not empty. It was permission.
Witnesses were expensive because truth became harder to murder after it learned to multiply.
The corridor had no witnesses.
That was the part that made it dangerous.
Not the false wall, not the broken light crystal, not the simulated bodies that had breathed like real people until my answer ruined the lesson. Not even Professor Malcris, who had smiled with the patience of a man watching a locked door learn how to open itself.
No witnesses meant no public damage.
No public damage meant the story had failed to complete its correction.
Which meant it would try again.
I stood in front of the Obsidian dormitory mirror with my gloves half-pulled on, watching the blackened skin along my palm disappear beneath noble leather. Burns healed slowly when pride was the only medicine allowed. The left hand flexed badly. The ring finger lagged behind the others by half a heartbeat.
Useful information.
