The evacuation settled into a grim rhythm. The line of students, led by knights and professors, snaked through the reopened bronze door, back into the ruined junction with its trapped floor and prophetic murals, and then began the careful climb up the rubble slope toward the distant tear of grey light. The air, once thick with the scent of fear and blood, now carried the sharp smell of sweat and determination. Order had been imposed, but it was a fragile order, stretched thin over the raw nerves of forty-two traumatized souls.
I was placed near the middle of the procession, a strategic position for a high-value witness who was also visibly unstable. A knight walked ahead of me, another behind. They were my escort, my guard. Kaelen's words—You're the one—hung in the air between us all, unspoken but shaping every action. I was not just being evacuated; I was being delivered.
