The Echo in the Hall
The Lyceum quieted at night.
Not fully.
Just enough for the walls to whisper.
Pulse energy dimmed low across the floors, humming beneath the dormitory tiles like a sleeping heartbeat. Students murmured behind doors. Glyph-lamps flickered in meditation mode. The kingdom felt distant here, like the hum of war couldn't reach through the stillness.
Zephryn walked the corridor alone.
Not because the others asked him to.
But because he needed the space.
To breathe.
To listen.
To remember.
He passed familiar doors.
Old names half-erased.
New ones burned over the wood.
His old room still stood at the end of the hall—dorm 7C, left side. No name etched into the glyph plate. No pulse signature logged.
He opened the door without thinking.
It still creaked the same way.
The room inside was bare.
No notes. No relics.
Just an echo that sounded too much like his own footsteps.
He set the scarf down on the corner of the bed.
The air shifted.
It wasn't cold.
But something pulled at the back of his neck like a warning.
A glyph hum.
Faint. Not aggressive.
Watching.
He turned slowly.
The corridor behind him was empty.
But only in light.
Something had moved.
Not loud. Not sharp. Just… deliberate.
He stepped into the hallway.
Silence.
Then—
A pulse flicker down the far stairwell.
Not Lyceum standard.
Older.
Familiar.
Zephryn narrowed his eyes.
"You're not one of them."
He reached for the scarf again.
And the light glyphs dimmed just enough for a shape to slip out of frame—too fast to see, but not fast enough to be forgotten.