Chapter 791: The Past Two Months
Chapter 791: The Past Two Months
The corridor beyond Tactical Espionage was already crowded with students spilling out from nearby classrooms. The academy seemed to breathe differently at the end of the day, its strict order loosening into movement and noise.Boots scraped against polished stone. Voices rose and overlapped. Cloaks and coats rustled as students prepared to cross the grounds. Lamps along the walls had already been lit, their pale flames trembling faintly inside glass casings as the late afternoon light faded through the tall windows.
Outside, autumn had nearly surrendered.
The academy grounds stretched under a dimming sky, the kind of gray-blue that came just before evening settled fully. Trees that had once held gold and red leaves now stood half-bare along the stone paths, their branches thin and dark against the sky.
Fallen leaves gathered at the edges of the walkways, damp from earlier mist, and the wind dragged them in restless little scrapes across the ground. The distant towers of Dark Knight Academy rose sharp and black above everything, their banners snapping in the cold air with a sound like cloth being torn.
Students stepped out into the courtyard and immediately changed. The casual looseness they had found indoors vanished as the wind hit them. Some pulled collars higher. Others tucked their hands into pockets or under their arms.
A group of first-years hurried past with their shoulders hunched, their academy coats still too new, their faces still carrying that early-year softness that made them seem untouched by anything serious. They complained loudly about the cold, about homework, about instructors, about the cafeteria running out of warm bread before they arrived.
Liam found all of it irritating.
Not the students specifically. The cold.
It slid under his collar and pressed against his skin with a patient kind of persistence, the sort that did not need force to be unpleasant. Tempest’s cold was wet and creeping, carried by wind that moved between buildings and found every gap in clothing.
It was not as severe as Crescent’s winter air. Not even close.
Crescent had been worse, especially during that gathering before the king, where the cold had felt cleaner, sharper, and more arrogant somehow, like even the weather there had inherited the kingdom’s sense of superiority.