The evacuation stalled at the corridor.
It was a wide, vaulted passage that had once connected the lecture hall wing to the main Academy rotunda, lined with marble busts of former headmasters and faded tapestries depicting imperial victories. Now, it was a canyon of ruin. Jagged cracks spiderwebbed up the walls, branching across the ceiling in a dark, arterial network. Great slabs of masonry had calved from above, creating a treacherous, rubble-choked obstacle course. But the true enemy was not the fallen stone—it was the threat of more.
