The scarf sat snug around his neck—folded once, looped twice.

Zephryn didn’t remember wrapping it.

The air outside the dorm was quiet. Not silent—just full of sound that hadn’t learned how to mean anything yet. Shoes scraping stone. Distant footsteps layered over soft murmurs. The morning hum of Celestis Veil preparing itself.

Kaelen stood by the stairwell, cloak folded over one arm, arms crossed like a sentinel who never quite learned how to rest.

He didn’t speak. He just nodded.

That was enough.

Yolti leaned against the column near the main path, toast in hand, chewing slowly as she stared at Zephryn like she was waiting for him to vanish again.

He didn’t.

“Took you long enough,” she muttered. “We’re gonna be late.”

Zephryn let the door close behind him.

Selka emerged from the opposite stairwell, footsteps so light the stone barely reacted. Her cloak was already fastened. A subtle shimmer of blue energy flickered behind her eyes—Pulse alignment. Already focused.

She didn’t speak.

She didn’t need to.

The four of them fell into rhythm as they walked toward the Lyceum.

Celestis Veil unfurled around them like it had never ended.

Spiral pathways. Floating bridges. Energy lights suspended in glass spheres that pulsed with a slow rhythm like heartbeat lanterns. Children passed by in training robes. Merchants set up stalls along the corridor bends—books, talismans, pulse glass trinkets.

Nothing had changed.

And everything had.

Kaelen kept his hands in his pockets, posture stiff.

Yolti peeled the last bite of toast apart but didn’t eat it.

Selka walked just behind Zephryn, eyes locked on the distant arches of the Lyceum gates.

And Zephryn?

He kept breathing.

It wasn’t peace.

But it wasn’t silence either.

As they approached the gates, the structure rose higher than he remembered.

The Harmonic Lyceum.

A cathedral built from stone and pulse steel, lined with glyphlight and stained glass windows that shifted subtly depending on who walked beneath them.

Each window told a different story.

Each story remembered a different war.

Each war had a cost.

Zephryn looked up.

One window flickered.

It looked like the cliff.

“You ever think maybe we don’t belong here anymore?” Kaelen asked, quietly.

Zephryn paused.

“I think we’re exactly where we were always supposed to be.”

Kaelen said nothing. But his shoulders dropped half an inch.

The doors ahead opened.

And the hum inside was alive.