Yamato AkemiArclight smelled like polished stone and expensive restraint.The campus had been built to impress people who pretended they didn’t care about being impressed. Everything consisted of tall arches, carved columns, and wards woven so subtly into the architecture that most visitors would never notice them unless they were looking for weak points. Even the air felt curated, like the Academy had trained it to behave.It was pretty much one of my least favorite places. It was everything wrong with Upper Plain society.My attendants kept formation without being told. Wide sleeves bound back, sashes tied with the kind of precision that made lesser clans nervous. Blades worn edge-down at the hip, steel quiet in its scabbard instead of the unrestored state that most people carried. We moved through the grounds as a single unit because that was the only honest way to move.My brother walked two paces behind me.Kaoru tried to match our rhythm. He tried to carry his person and persona the way our instructors and tutors demanded. He tried to hold his shoulders the way one of the heirs of the Yamato Clan was expected to hold them. The effort showed in small places; the stiffness in his elbows, the way his attention darted toward every whispered glance in the crowd, and how his hand sat on his blade.He was nervous, almost excited. He had seen the news on the World Tree Lattice and searched the rumors on the forums.He knew. Everyone knew.The event, an attack, a terrorist using forbidden magic to hurt a whole lot of people. He heard of the Ghost and the Extreme Starlight spell that cut through sky and stone like reality had briefly forgotten it was solid. He saw the man in a skull mask carrying a child through smoke. He and the rest of the world had seen the Ghost of the Wastes move and inundate the World Tree Lattice faster than the official reports ever could.He and the rest of the world had (...)