[Academia Arcanum: The Skyborne Citadel | Aetherweaving Lecture Hall | Initiates & Adepts]

A lecture hall of eighty students simmered in elegant disorder.

Desks had been claimed like thrones, barricades, and minor kingdoms. Coats lay draped over sentient textbooks that squirmed beneath the insult. Untended aether sigils drifted near the vaulted ceiling, dim and petulant, while a cluster of Adepts in the back passed a mana orb between them like a toy they knew could explode.

Near the windows, someone had grown a vine through three desks. Near the aisle, two students argued over a wager in whispers.

“Five silver marks says the new professor leaves before the first bell.”

“Ten says someone makes them cry.”

The lecture hall hummed with idle magic, arrogance, and the dangerous boredom of students too gifted for caution.

Then the latch clicked.

Every floating sigil stilled.

The mana orb slipped from one student’s hand and hung frozen in midair.

The door began to open.