The Academy shrank behind us.
I watched it go, my gaze fixed on the familiar spires as they grew smaller and smaller against the morning sky. First they lost their detail, becoming mere silhouettes against the clouds. Then they began to blur, their sharp outlines softening with distance. Finally, they were just a smudge on the horizon, a memory taking shape even as it faded.
I watched until I could no longer, until the last trace of them disappeared behind a rise in the road, and I was left with only the landscape ahead.
The road stretched before us, grey and dusty, winding through the gentle hills that surrounded the capital. I knew this road. I had traveled it in my vision, in that impossible moment when Frosthold had seemed more real than the Academy room where I lay sleeping. I had seen it through the eyes of prophecy, every landmark weighted with meaning I had not fully understood.
Now I traveled it in reality, and every landmark carried new weight.
